Amid high levels of resistance to priority pathogens and limited treatment options in China's hospitals, the Chinese government has published its new plan to fight antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Announced in October, the National Action Plan for Combating Antimicrobial Resistance (2022-2025) was developed by China's National Health Commission and focuses on "the need to effectively control major pathogens of human and animal origin and gives new annual targets and more detailed indicators for combating AMR," officials with China's Ministry of Health wrote yesterday in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
Ever since the MCR-1 gene, which confers resistance to the last-resort antibiotic colistin, emerged from China in 2016, public health experts have been concerned about widespread antibiotic use and high levels of AMR in China. That concern is underscored by 2021 data from the China Antimicrobial Surveillance Network, which show the resistance rates of meropenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, meropenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and meropenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii were 24.4%, 18.9%, and 72.3%, respectively.
"In China, few antimicrobial agents are available for treating infections caused by a carbapenem-resistant organism," the officials wrote.
Key objectives
The five key objectives of the plan, which build on targeted efforts developed under China's first national action plan, include slowing the emergence of resistant organisms and preventing the spread of resistant infections; strengthening the national health surveillance network that monitors AMR; accelerating basic and applied research and development for new antibiotics, vaccines, and diagnostics; establishing national reference laboratory performance standards for antimicrobial susceptibility; and improving international collaboration and capacities for AMR prevention, surveillance, and control.
The creation of national AMR action plans was an important element of the global action plan put forward by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015 to address the emerging AMR crisis. A 2021 survey from the WHO showed that 86% of responding countries had developed multisectoral national AMR action plans, but only 20% were actively monitoring implementation of those plans.