New Findings from Tanzania’s 3-year National Antimicrobial Consumption Analysis

One of the WHO’s Benchmarks for International Health Regulations recommends that member states establish protocols and databases for monitoring antimicrobial use and consumption for a country to reach capacity levels 2 and 3. The United Republic of Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children and the USAID MTaPS program published findings of a three-year trend analysis of national antimicrobial consumption in the peer-reviewed journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology’s section on Pharmaceutical Medicine and Outcomes Research.

This is the first study from the sub-Saharan Africa region that provides a comprehensive picture of national-level consumption of priority antimicrobials based on the WHO’s antimicrobial consumption methodology. Two principal findings:

• Based on the WHO’s Access, Watch and Reserve (AWaRe) classification, more than 90% of antimicrobial consumption was in the Access class medications exceeding WHO’s target of at least 60% consumption in that class.
• The majority of antimicrobial consumption occurred in the private sector.  The proportion of private-sector antibiotic consumption increased annually from 2017 to 2019 suggesting the need for heightened oversight in the private sector in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

The study was led by the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children in partnership with the Tanzania Medicine and Medical Devices Authority, the USAID MTaPS program, and its global expert partner, the University of Washington, Seattle.

Link to publication: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.585553/full