World Antibiotic Awareness Week, 12-18 November 2018

Change can’t wait. Our time with antibiotics is running out. That is why the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) has committed to concerted effort across continents and sectors to meet the complex challenges posed by antibiotic resistance – and to ensure the availability of effective treatments now and in the future. During this important awareness-raising week, BSAC has committed to undertake the following:

• Nov 13 Through our All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antibiotics, we will stage a drop-in awareness-raising session for Parliamentarians and their staff, followed by a meeting entitled ‘How close are we to meeting the need for new antibiotics?’. Representative from CARB-X, GARDP, and the ABPI, will all endeavour to respond to the question through a series of talks
• Nov 13 to 15 We will attend and support the Federation of Infection Societies Conference 2018 in Gateshead. This is the UK’s premier infection conference, focusing on the most important issues facing modern infection practice, while bringing together some of the best and most thoughtful minds from around the world
• Nov 16 We will talk about the critical importance of innovative educational approaches to AMR at the Royal Society of Medicine’s ‘One Health’ event, ‘Collaborating to fight antimicrobial resistance: education and innovation to tackle a mutual threat’
• Nov 17 Dr Nicholas Brown, our Director of Public and Professional Engagement, will speak at the ‘Advocating a behavioural change’ event – a national interdisciplinary AMR conference for students in London. You can book tickets here.
• Nov 19-20 We will act as partner at the Wellcome Trust’s ‘Call to Action’ conference in Ghana. The event, which is also supported by the UN Foundation, World Bank, and the Governments of Ghana, Thailand, and the UK, will bring the global health/science community together ahead of next year’s UN summit, where AMR will be discussed
• We will continue to perform and promote BSAC’s flagship public engagement project, The Mould that Changed the World – a musical that follows the life of Alexander Fleming before looking forward to a world embroiled in a ‘post-antibiotic apocalypse’. The UK’s Chief Medical Officers have all urged schools to put on their own version of this show by registering for the free online resource pack
• Launch the BSAC Antimicrobial Stewardship Nursing Forum
• Launch a Massive Open Online Course on Antimicrobial Stewardship for the African continent – Antimicrobial Stewardship for Africa
• Announce the launch of an innovative online knowledge-exchange platform
• Continue to develop and promote TARGET Antibiotics – Prescribing in Primary Care
• Publish an article in the Antibiotic Awareness supplement that will appear in the Guardian during WAAW.

We invite you all to get involved, and to share our work and Twitter activity via @TheUrgentNeed, @BSACandJAC, and #WAAW2018 #StopSuperbugs.

Together we can make the difference that’s needed.