- The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a new tool using the “access,” “watch,” and “reserve” designations established previously, to limit the use of drugs associated with the highest risk of resistance and to increase the use of antibiotics in countries where supply and availability is low.
- The tool, called AWaRe (for Access, Watch, and Reserve), was developed by the WHO Essential Medicines List to reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), antibiotic-related adverse events, and drug costs.
- As per WHO, AWaRe is only a single tool to combat antimicrobial resistance. But a failure to use this tool, as well as others, including novel antibiotic development, will “halt modern medicine as we know it today.
- The first goal of AWaRe is to have all countries report antibiotic use by 2023. The second goal is to limit 60% of global antibiotic consumption to drugs from the “access” category.
- All drugs on the “aware” list are also on the WHO’s Essential Medicine’s “core” list, and include amoxicillin and cloxacillin.
- Using ‘Access’ antibiotics lowers the risk of resistance because they are ‘narrow-spectrum’ antibiotics (that target a specific microorganism rather than several). They are also less costly because they are available in generic formulations.
- Currently 65 countries track antibiotic use, and only 29 of the 65 meet the 60% access antibiotics goal. Of those 29, Brazil is the largest.
- Some countries, including the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, and Germany have already adopted AWaRe, and the tool gained approval of the G20 last year.
- Union Health Ministry (India) has made it mandatory to display a 5mm-thick red vertical band on the packaging of prescription-only drugs to sensitise people to be cautious while buying these medicines that are widely sold without prescriptions.
