Stewardship Prize Winner Announced

Prize Winner: Infectious Diseases Institute – Kampala, Uganda

After careful review, the AMR Industry Alliance is proud to announce the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Kampala, Uganda as the inaugural winner of the AMR Stewardship Prize: Strengthening Stewardship and Appropriate Use in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.  Dr. Josephine Akirana from IDI will participate in the Alliance’s virtual WAAW session. IDI is a specialist HIV clinic with over 8000 patients. In 2016, following an audit of IDI’s digital prescription database which revealed a high rate of antibiotic prescription with few indications cited, IDI established a dedicated multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) committee.

Since 2016, the IDI AMS committee has worked to:

• Perform an annual audit of antibiotic prescription rates and practices
• Provide confidential individual feedback to physicians on their antibiotic prescription rates on a quarterly basis
• Annually commemorate World Antibiotic Awareness Week (WAAW), with continuous medical education dedicated to improving antibiotic use and awareness materials
• Distribute national guidelines on antibiotic use to each physician.
• Display physician-signed commitment letters in individual clinic rooms to reinforce appropriate use practices

Impact to Date

So far, these efforts have resulted in:

• Reduced antibiotic prescription rate by 21.3% since 2015, corresponding with absolute reduction of 5,826 antibiotic prescriptions made annually; and
• Increased diagnosis rate before antibiotic use by 25% since 2016.

Next Steps

IDI will work to establish a diagnostic stewardship program and run patient awareness campaigns in order to increase the number of antimicrobial susceptibility tests performed for prescription and improve patient knowledgeability on AMR. IDI will also disseminate standard operating procedures and best practices from their work to inform national programming and initiatives in other low-resource settings.

Runners-up

The AMR Industry Alliance is also happy to share the work of the two runners-up of the AMR Stewardship Prize: Fortis Hospital in Mohali, India and Artemis Hospital in Gurgaon, India.