World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2022

World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) is an annual global campaign to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and encourage best practices among the public, One Health stakeholders, and policymakers, who all play an important role in reducing the further emergence and spread of AMR. WAAW will be celebrated November 18-24.

This year, the theme of WAAW is “Preventing Antimicrobial Resistance Together.”

AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death. As a result of drug resistance, antimicrobials become ineffective, and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat. Researchers estimated that AMR in bacteria caused an estimated 1.27 million deaths in 2019.¹

A global action plan to address the urgent problem of antimicrobial resistance was endorsed at the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015. One of the key objectives of the plan is to improve awareness and understanding of AMR through effective communication, education, and training.

CLSI has a longstanding globally trusted reputation for its diligent development of microbiology and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) standards and guidelines on test methods and QC procedures. Additionally, CLSI annually creates and revises AST breakpoints to meet global public health challenges related to antimicrobial resistance. CLSI’s library of microbiology standards and AST guidelines establish vital performance criteria and best practice guidelines for use in the clinical microbiology laboratory field. Learn more about CLSI's involvement with WAAW here.

1. Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators. (2022). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. The Lancet; 399(10325):P629-655. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0