National Action Plan on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance.

This National Action Plan on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance is a 5-year nationwide multi-sectoral document, based on a 'One health' approach, developed in line with the Global Action Plan (GAP) on AMR adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2015. The purpose of the Plan is the fight against AMR, considered a national duty and priority not only for professionals working in the field but also for every individual in the Lebanese community. The core objectives and activities to be executed in the NAP consist of the following 5 Axis (i) awareness of AMR; (ii) surveillance of AMR; (iii) infection prevention and control (IPC); (iv) antibiotics (ABX) use; and (v) budget planning and fund attraction.
To make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the NAP aims at (i) improving AMR awareness among professionals in the field (veterinarians, farmers) through research projects about AMR surveillance and designing an epidemiologically representative sample for AMR surveillance (cattle, poultry, companion animals, plants, crops, etc); (ii) conducting and optimizing AMR surveillance in the agricultural, food, veterinary, and environmental fields; (iii) controlling and regulating the use of antibiotics in the veterinary, agriculture, food production, and environmental sectors; and (iv) reviewing the list of drugs and pesticides officially imported in agriculture and report on antimicrobials officially imported for agriculture use.
As for Governance, the pyramidal structure consists of (i) the Technical Committee on International Health Regulation (IHR) which is the multidisciplinary highest level authority having the executive power to back up decisions of national committees in ministries and help to introduce high-level decisions and policies; (ii) the National multi-sectorial Committee with the following main tasks 1.organize the work and allocate tasks to different subcommittees related to AMR containment, 2.evaluate the functioning of subcommittees, and 3.communicate the final decisions with the Technical Committee on IHR; and (iii) a focal person and a technical working group (plus TOR) assigned for each Axis, which aims at organizing the responsibilities and executing tasks promptly.