Time to revisit lessons from drive against TB, polio, HIV
Citizen ownership represents deep public engagement where AMR is viewed not as a distant scientific issue but as a shared social challenge.
India’s own public-health successes underscore the power of citizen participation. The polio eradication campaign, community-led HIV advocacy, tuberculosis survivor networks, and women’s collectives like Kudumbashree demonstrate that widespread behaviour change and treatment adherence improve when communities lead. Antibiotics are life-saving medicines, but their power is diminishing due to widespread overuse and misuse. When antibiotics are taken unnecessarily or stopped prematurely, bacteria develop resistance, making common infections harder and more expensive to treat. This threatens routine medical procedures and imposes a substantial socio-economic burden, especially on low- and middle-income countries like India.
The recent World Antimicrobial Awareness Week marked the launch of India’s National Action Plan (NAP) 2.0, reaffirming the government’s commitment to tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the most serious public health threats of the 21st century. Since the first NAP in 2017, India has strengthened AMR surveillance networks, introduced regulations to discourage misuse of antibiotics, banned certain antimicrobials as growth promoters in poultry, improved access to diagnostics through the National Essential Diagnostics List, and enhanced infection control through initiatives like Kayakalp. Standards for antimicrobial use in the food sector have also been introduced. However, significant gaps remain, and successful implementation of NAP 2.0 over the next five years will be critical. Notably, in countries where NAPs succeeded, progress was closely monitored, and a key factor was strong community participation and ownership.
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