Healthcare Facilities across Qatar Celebrated World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2022​​

Some activities to celebrate WAAW at healthcare facilities included conducting special ceremony to kickstart the campaign at the facilities with physicians sharing personal experiences about the importance of proper antimicrobial use, conducting live lectures to medical staff, decorating the facilities with WAAW material, utilizing monitors across facilities flashing short clips and messages to increased awareness among patients and their families, placing posters and flyers with key awareness messages across the facility, playing AMR word games, and competitions for best antimicrobial awareness posters and best decorations and prizes given as incentive. To increase the visibility of this global campaign, healthcare facilities participated in the “Go Blue" color campaign for AMR Awareness during the WAAW by wearing blue when participating in the WAAW events, adjusting social media profiles to blue, and sharing with friends, family, and colleagues, and on social medica when Going Blue.

The Ministry of Health has also conducted an extensive social media campaign in support of efforts to promote awareness and optimal use of antimicrobial resistance.

In addition to healthcare facilities, the invitation to celebrate WAAW was also sent to the animal health sector, Food Safety sector, Environmental Health, and academic institutions urging them to participate in the celebration and encourage the prudent use of antimicrobials and to strengthen preventive measures addressing AMR, working together collaboratively through a One Health approach.

The National Action Plan (NAP) for tackling AMR is due for update by 2023. For this occasion, the Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Department at MOPH conducted a two-day workshop on November 6th and 7th to update the plan for next phase of implementation in line with the Qatar National Health Strategy 2023-2030. The first NAP was developed in 2017 to cover period of 2018-2022 after extensive consultations and input from stakeholders. Same approach was undertaken to begin the process for updating the NAP and stakeholders from multiple sectors such as Human Health, Animal Health, Food Safety, Food Security, Public Health, and academic and research institutions were invited. The workshop is first in a series of workshops that are planned to be conducted to update the NAP. In this first workshop, participants conducted deep situation analysis of the five major objectives of the NAP from 2018-2022 and drafted the operational plan for the next phase based on the finding of the analysis. In subsequent workshops, additional stakeholders will be consulted, and their input will be incorporated in the next NAP.