COMBAT AMR: Strengthening Antimicrobial Resistance Management in Sub-Saharan Africa
The COMBAT AMR in Africa Network (Comprehensive Multi-Centre Bioinformatics-based Action to Tackle AMR in sub-Saharan Africa) brought together six German infectious disease and tropical medicine departments with partner institutions across five sub-Saharan African countries. The project improved patient care by providing microbiological results and treatment guidelines via web and smartphone applications.
During its first phase, the initiative enabled real-time access to patient and aggregated AMR data through an Android app and a DHIS2-based web platform, with data securely stored and reported to national authorities.
Now entering its second phase, the project aims to expand the application’s capabilities to include antibiotic alerts (e.g., Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales, Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing bacteria), patient queues for tracking clinical events, preliminary tests (such as Gram staining and Indian ink staining), and a printable patient report output.
African Partners Institutions
- College of Health Sciences and Asella Teaching and Referral Hospital
- Jimma University Specialized Hospital
- Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and Komfo Ankye Teaching Hospital (KATH)
- Kenyatta National Hospital
- University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB)
- Kiruddu National Referral Hospital
German Partners Institutions
- College of Health Sciences and Asella Teaching and Referral Hospital
- Jimma University Specialized Hospital
- Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and Komfo Ankye Teaching Hospital (KATH)
- Kenyatta National Hospital
- University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB)
- Kiruddu National Referral Hospital
Team
Gitika Arora
Head - Health Systems
Neha Chadha
Sr. Project Officer – DHIS2
Akshita Pundir
Sr. Project Officer - DHIS2
Publications
| # | Title | Publication | Year | Url |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Social and cultural determinants of antibiotics prescriptions: analysis from a public community health centre in North India | Frontiers in Pharmacology | 2024 | View |
| 2 | Systems thinking based approaches to engage with health inequities shaping Antimicrobial Resistance in low and lower-middle-income countries | Journal of Infection and Public Health | 2023 | View |
| 4 | Assessing feasibility of point-of-care Antibiotics Susceptibility Testing technologies for mitigating access gaps for peripheral communities | 2023 | View | |
| 3 | Digital Monitoring of Antibiotic Resistance (ABR) in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Narrative Literature Review | Scandinavian Conference on Health Informatics | 2022 | View |
| 5 | Strengthening digital monitoring of antibiotic resistance in low-resource settings | Journal of Global Health | 2022 | View |
| 6 | Designing an Antibiotics Resistance (ABR) monitoring system to strengthen the evidence base for facilitating responsible antibiotics prescription by physicians: A case study from India | ICIS 2022 | 2022 | View |
| 7 | Routinizing practices and stabilizing institutional work: A case of digital monitoring of Antibiotic Resistance (ABR) in India | Communications of the Association for Information Systems | 2022 | View |
| 8 | Designing for Scale: Strengthening Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance in Low Resource Settings | IFIP Joint Working Conference on the Future of Digital Work: The Challenge of Inequality (IFIPJWC) | 2022 | View |
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