DAR ES SALAAM: As years go by, we are witnessing worrying scenarios where a woman loses her husband to a drug-resistant infection, a newborn succumbs to in an infection which fails to respond to first-line antibiotics, a farmer watches animals fail to thrive despite treatment, and a clinician is forced to make impossible choices when diagnostics are scarce and the “last resort” drug is either inaccessible or no longer works.
These are the disturbing realities of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) which occurs when microorganisms—like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites—change over time and no longer respond to the medicines designed to kill them. Infections, as a result, become harder or impossible to treat.
However, this is not what we would have witnessed many years ago. Across the East, Central, and Southern Africa region, we are seeing a shift that explains why AMR is a public health crisis that is now deeply embedded in our daily lives.
It’s no longer an abstract concept or mere topic confined to technical reports, policy recommendations, or national plans that we should leave to technocrats to deal with. It’s a battle for all of us, and we must act now.
For a long time AMR has been ‘faceless’. It has been that problem that seems to be invisible yet causing havoc, quietly but stealthily.
If we are to protect today and preserve tomorrow, as the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) 2025 theme urges, we must act together and we must act now.
AMR is often framed as a clinical problem. It is not. It is a systems problem that touches health security, food safety, livelihoods.
AMR is slowing the attainment of 12 out of the 17 SDGs, with the threat being particularly pronounced for SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).
It thrives where supply chains are fragile, where infection prevention and control is inconsistent, where Water Hygiene and Sanitation in communities are inadequate, where quality data are thin, and where medicines—human and animal—are overused or poorly regulated.
No single country, sector and certainly no single hospital or farm, can hold back an evolving microbial tide alone.
Our greatest leverage lies in regional cooperation: aligning standards, sharing data, pooling expertise, sharing knowledge and experiences, coordinating investments, and telling a common story that moves decision-makers into actions-beyond the boardrooms.
This is why ECSA-HC’s emphasis on regional approaches matters. Where south to south conversations and collaborations come alive.
When countries harmonize surveillance methods, antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial use data become comparable—and comparability is power. It allows targets to be realistically set.
ALSO READ: How responsible drinking can save lives from road fatalities
It turns scattered numbers into a shared signal, allowing us to target resources where they will do the most good and to hold ourselves collectively accountable for results.
Our regional Communities of Practice on AMR and IPC has created the muscle memory for collaboration: epidemiologists, pharmacists, veterinarians, laboratorians, and communicators solving problems side by side, rather than duplicating efforts in silos.
And when we validate pre-service curricula together—human and animal health alike—we seed a generation of professionals who speak the same technical language of stewardship and infection prevention.
“Act now” means being practical and disciplined. It means embedding infection prevention and control as the non-negotiable foundation of safe care; using the AWaRe (Access, Watch and Reserve categorization) framework to shift use toward Access antibiotics; strengthening regulators to track and curb inappropriate sales; and investing in labs that can detect threats early and guide therapy precisely.
It means cleaning data before cleaning dashboards—because truth in, truth out. It means translating surveillance into policy briefs, budget lines, plans and actions that will drive behavior change.
It also means placing the people, communities at the center of our interventions.
“Protect the present” means ensuring that a clinician on call has access to diagnostics, the nurse on a night shift and a veterinarian in a remote district both have the right tools today: water, sanitation and hygiene supplies; basic IPC commodities; reliable diagnostics; standard treatment guidelines that reflect local resistance patterns; and continuous mentorship to use them well.
Protection is also about dignity and trust—engaging communities, pharmacists, and media partners so that behavior change is owned, not imposed.
“Preserve the future” means building institutions, competencies and capacities that endure beyond projects and personalities: accreditation frameworks that assure quality; regional networks that don’t fail when one link breaks, but provide countries with a mechanism to strengthen their processes.
It means anchoring AMR within broader health emergency preparedness and resilience agendas, primary health care so that financing flows are predictable and results are measurable It means cultivating a culture where data are not feared but valued—because evidence is our best defense against both pathogens and complacency.
Partnerships and collaborations are the cornerstones of our actions. Multisectoral coordination should not be a tag line, it is the day-to-day practice of sharing credit, solving for the long term, and aligning around what works.
Through the regional and country to country collaborations we have experienced sectors co-creating and implementing plans; universities and training colleges embed AMR and IPC into the core of degree programs; and journalists learn to translate complex findings into human stories that change minds. Each collaboration narrows the space where resistance can spread.
As we mark WAAW 2025, my appeal is simple to policymakers and parliamentarians: Be our champions, ring-fence budgets for IPC, WASH, surveillance, and stewardship and link these to transparent targets. Advocate for integration across the system building blocks.
To professional bodies and training institutions: make AMR and IPC a rite of passage, not an elective for sustained capacity building weaving in the right attitudes and practice and ultimately behaviour change.
To public health professionals: model the behaviour that will prevent transmission of infections and optimize the use of antimicrobials.
To partners and funding agencies: fund what is country owned, coordinated and comparable-because that is what lasts.
To the community: you have the power to turn the tide.
To the media: You are a trusted voice. Help the public act on facts, not myths and spotlight stories that show when antibiotics help—and when they don’t.
AMR is not an inevitable defeat; it is a test of coordination, courage, and follow-through.
The ECSA region has already shown that when we align our standards, share our data, and elevate our shared narrative, we can bend the arc toward safer and quality care, secure food systems, and resilient economies.
Acting now is how we protect the present; building together is how we preserve the future.
The author works with the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA- HC) based in Arusha, Tanzania, as a Senior Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Control Specialist