Assessment of the implementation of Pakistan’s National Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance in the agriculture and food sectors

Qiu, Y.; Ferreira, J.P.; Ullah, R.W.; Flanagan, P.; Zaheer, M.U.; Tahir, M.F.; Alam, J.; Hoet, A.E.; Song, J.; Akram, M.;

Assessment of the implementation of Pakistan’s National Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance in the agriculture and food sectors

Autores

Qiu, Y.; Ferreira, J.P.; Ullah, R.W.; Flanagan, P.; Zaheer, M.U.; Tahir, M.F.; Alam, J.; Hoet, A.E.; Song, J.; Akram, M.;

Editor

Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) ;

Descripción

The agriculture and food (agrifood) sectors play key roles in the emergence, spread, andcontainment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Pakistan’s first National Action Plan (NAP) on AMRwas developed to guide One Health interventions to combat AMR through 2017–2022. To improvesubsequent iterations, we assessed the implementation of Pakistan’s NAP in the agrifood sectors(NAPag) in October 2022, using the Progressive Management Pathway on AMR tool developed bythe Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The assessment tool addressedfour crucial focus areas of the NAPag: governance, awareness, evidence, and practices. Each focusarea contains multiple topics, which involve four sequential stages of activities to progressivelyachieve systematic management of AMR risk in the agrifood sectors. High-level representatives of theNAPag stakeholders provided information for the assessment through pre-event documentary reviewand workshop discussions. The assessment results showed that Pakistan’s NAPag had an overallmoderate coverage (59%) of the anticipated activities. Gaps were particularly notable in strengtheninggovernance, good practices, and interventions in non-livestock sectors. Furthermore, only 12% of theevaluated activities were fully executed and documented, consistently remaining at the planningand piloting stages in the livestock sector across all the examined topics. Insufficient attention tonon-livestock sectors, inadequate regulation and enforcement capacity, and resource constraints havehindered scalable and sustainable interventions under the current plan. This assessment providesvaluable insights to strengthen the inclusiveness and contribution of the agrifood sectors in the nextNAP iteration. In the short-to-medium term, strategic prioritization is necessary to optimize theuse of limited resources and target the most critical gaps, such as improving awareness among keystakeholders and fortifying regulations for prudent antimicrobial use. In the long term, integration ofAMR into the country’s broader health, development, and agricultural transformation agendas willbe needed to generate sustainable benefits.