The drive-AMS project has officially concluded its mission with a high-level meeting held in Brussels from 16 to 18 October. Consortium members as well as other AMR experts, policymakers, and public health officials from across Europe gathered to review the project’s achievements and lessons learned, but also to discuss possibilities to broaden the impact of drive-AMS and to make its legacy sustainable.
Antimicrobial stewardship discussions often focus on hospitals, yet the majority of antibiotics are prescribed outside the inpatient setting. The Global-PPS Outpatient Module was created to close this critical knowledge gap. To support teams in implementing the Outpatient Survey, the G-PPS team has developed a wealth of resources, offering clear guidance, training, and practical tools.
Today, the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA) launches a new PPS Short Report & Intervention Guide. It functions as a practical resource designed to help healthcare facilities interpret their Point Prevalence Survey (PPS) results and identify targeted antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) interventions.
To mark the start of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, we’re excited to share our new animated explainer video. This short piece introduces the basic features of the Global-PPS and shows how it served as a key piece of the puzzle within the behaviour-change approach of the now concluded drive-AMS project.
In this interview, we speak with Maxencia Nabiryo, Head of Programmes at the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA), about her work tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across Africa. She shares insights on why AMR poses a critical threat to healthcare systems, the role of data-driven initiatives like Global-PPS, and how programmes such as CwPAMS and SPARC are empowering local teams to strengthen antimicrobial stewardship.
With the drive-AMS project coming to an end, it’s time to look back and evaluate, but also to look toward the future. In this interview article, our Country Leads from Romania, Lithuania, Greece and Portugal reflect on the project’s impact and achievements, as well as on the challenges that accompanied the journey. Although some difficulties were shared across countries, others were specific to national contexts. What united the Country Leads, however, was a shared commitment to innovation and collaboration, and, most importantly, a unanimous consensus about the project’s impact and success.
After three intense years of excellent collaboration, the drive-AMS project has officially come to an end. Time for project coordinators Erika Vlieghe and Jeroen Schouten to look back on the achievements and lessons learned.
At the end of the EU-4H financed phase of drive-AMS, Unidade Local de Saúde São João, the Portuguese partner of the project, organized a two-days meeting gathering all the sixteen Portuguese Local Health Units aboard the program. In addition to these sixteen healthcare institutions, the Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, the Portuguese Hospital Infection Association, the Portuguese Hospital Administrators Association and the Portuguese Drug Agency (Infarmed) were also represented.