The AMRNCC with funding from the Eastern, Southern and Central Africa (ESCA) recently conducted a training on the implementation of Point Prevalence Surveys (PPS) and the development of Antibiograms. This training involved 5 participants from 7 health facilities each namely; Mangochi District Hospital, Mzimba District Hospital, Malamulo Hospital, Mzuzu Central Hospital, Zomba Central Hospital, Kamuzu Central Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. The 5 participants included a member from the following cadres; infection prevention and control, nursing, laboratory, clinician and pharmacy. Point prevalence surveys and antibiograms are important and recommended to be done often by health facilities because they inform decisions at health facility level on antimicrobial use and antimicrobial effectiveness, respectively.

This one-week trainer of trainer session was conducted at Chikho Hotel in Mponela from July 10th to 14th, 2023. Some of the topics covered during this session were; introduction to PPS, planning PPS, collecting data using the PPS tool, introduction to WHONET software, introduction to antibiograms, interpretation and use for guideline development and practical sessions for WHONET, PPS and Antibiograms.

In order to solidify the knowledge gained during this classroom training, a pilot practical session, took place between July 24th to 28th July 2023.

During this pilot session, the facility AMS teams performed and Point prevalence survey on antibiotic use using specific in-patient files and developed facility-specific antibiograms utilizing routine laboratory surveillance data. The pilot data collection session was supervised by key experts from the AMNRCC to ensure an efficient learning process and collection of data which may inform facility AMS activities. After the data collection exercise was done, the facilities are analyzing the data before disseminating their facility findings.