Featured Activity || Philippine Antimicrobial Awareness Week

The Philippines, like other Southeast Asian countries, has already been encountering the many challenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which include increasing social and economic costs and rising patient mortality. Although considered a global threat, it is already an emerging local health concern which calls for an urgent collaboration among different sectors to provide solutions addressing this growing problem.

The DOH through the FDA continues to collaborate with other involved agencies such as the Department of Agriculture for the implementation of the Philippine Action Plan to Combat AMR adhering to the “One Health Approach” strategy. We are guided by the Six-Point Policy Package of the World Health Organization with various Key Point strategies that leads our action against AMR. The FDA commits its role in ensuring the uninterrupted access to essential medicines of assured quality and regulation and promotion of the rational use of medicines in the human and animal health sectors.

This is a multifaceted and holistic strategy to consolidate the fragmented efforts and systems in the country by enabling different stakeholders such as health professionals, policy makers and other government systems to use it as a platform for national campaigns on prudent antibiotic use. This is an initiative to sustain concrete actions that will help curb AMR for our future generations.

While national public health efforts continue to focus on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, this public health priority do not overshadow the FDA’s effort to contain the current “not so silent” AMR pandemic.

The FDA remains deeply committed to the fight against AMR so that we can preserve antimicrobials for future generations.