Mauritius has successfully developed its second national action plan on anti-microbial resistance (AMR) 2024-2028, through a three-week robust workshop supported by the World Health Organization. This comes following the evaluation of the first national action plan (NAP) 2018-2022 by the same team from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) in September 2023.
The Ministry of Health and Wellness of Mauritius has shown great concern about the burden of AMR. A significant number of deaths in Mauritius can be attributed to hospital-acquired infections, many of which are caused by drug-resistant organisms. The global findings are also worrying with 1.27 million deaths caused by AMR while a further 4.95 million deaths are associated with AMR in 2019.
The WHO Representative Dr Anne Ancia has underlined the high rates of multi-drug organisms reported at hospital level and most importantly in the intensive care units. The growing rates of AMR and the decline in new antibiotics emerging on the pharmaceutical market are likely to accentuate the problem of lack of treatment for resistant infections contributing to higher mortality rates.
