How Collaborative Action Can Tackle Antibiotic Resistance in Africa

"A lot of effort has been put into addressing huge global health issues like HIV and TB. But unfortunately for AMR, given its complexity and the many factors that drive it [...] it's been sort of running or it's been developing and progressing under the radar [...]. So you have two problems. The problem of overuse and the problem of lack of access [to basic antibiotics]," Dr. Kalanxhi notes.

"Primarily, the mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance are very numerous. If the antibiotic, which is meant to kill the bacteria or microorganism, does not have access into the bacteria or microorganism, then that is one mechanism where which the bacteria become resistant. Number two, every antibiotic antimicrobial has specific targets in the cell of bacteria where it has to fix to and cause the death or the inhibition of the growth in the microbes. But if the bacteria or microorganism was able to alter these drug targets, it's another mechanism whereby this antibiotic will no longer function again against the bacteria. The third one is the inactivation of the antibiotics. In this case the bacteria now produce something that's inactivate the antibiotic when it comes [...]. So, there are a lot of drivers that drive this emergence of this resistance," Dr. Yusuf says.