AMR war

Name of the activity: AMR war

Country/NMO: Morocco (IFMSA-Morocco)

Program: Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education. Education on health issues for specific societal groups, either in the form of projects (set of tasks for a certain group over a fixed period of time), events (something notable that happens) or conferences (form meeting about ideas related to a particular topic, usually over several days).

General description:

In Morocco, antibiotics are so communly used, patients can buy them easily, and health professionals can prescribe them so easily too. In order to tackle the problem of overconsumpsion of antibiotics in the Moroccan community, we collaborated with pharmacy and veterinary students and decided to raise awareness of the general population by making a national media campaign, with a video, radio shows and multiple journal articles on the topic. We also post posters and distribute leaflets in public places, clinis and pharmacies. We also do awareness sessions for youth in high schools and universities

We also target health professionals and health students, starting with a national congress done the 18th of November, to talk on AMR dangers and ways of prevention. We also do awareness sessions for health students and health professionals as well as specialised workshops for them to improve their knowledge and attitude regarding antibiotic use.

The campaign is continuing along the year.

Focus area:

Reduce incidence of Antimicrobial Resistance

Problem statement:

In Morocco, there is an over the counter consumption of antibiotics in different fields, helthcare professionals lack adequate tools to control this consupsion and they tend to prescribe it inadequately which makes it even worse, besides the lack of knowledge of the population and the nonrespect of laws and regulations, which makes it that anyone can buy a drug without a prescription.

All this rises the risk of AMR in the moroccan community even higher.

Target groups:

General population, Medical students, Healthcare Students, Doctors, Other health professionals, Youth

Beneficiaries:

General population, Healthcare Students, Doctors, Other health professionals

Objectives and indicators of success:

– Improve knowledge of health students present in our events on the dangers of AMR and the appopriate use of antibiotics

– Improve knowledge of health professionals on the dangers of AMR and the appopriate use of antibiotics

– Improve knowlede of the general population on the danger of misuse of antibiotics

Indicators are:

Number of students attending our events, number of events made, number of health professionals attending our events, degree of improvement of knowledge of participants after our events, number of awareness sessions done for general population, number of views of our video, number of posters shared, number of journal articles written, number of radio shows done.

Methodology:

We did a national congress on AMR with pharmacy and veterinary students, in the 18th of November, inviting multiple stakeholders acting on AMR from different fields, like the health ministry, orders of doctors, pharmacists, and veterinary doctors, national office of food security… and targetting health students from all over the country, for two days to speak about the serious impact of AMR and antibiotic use, and the ways to optimise that use and prevent AMR.

We then made a video on AMR and shared it on our social media accounts and electronic journals to raise awareness of the general population.

After that we are working on doing awareness sessions in universities and high schools to reach youth and improve their knowledge on proper antibiotic use.

We also work on doing workshops for doctors and health professionals on proper antibiotic use and the latest recommendations, in collaboration with our professors, WHO and the health ministry

We also put posters on AMR in public places

Plans for evaluation:

We plan to have pre and post assessment surveys for our awareness sessions in universities and high schools as well as in our workshops for health professionals, we also count the number of people attending our sessions. ( target 8000)

For the national congress, we count the number of people attending, send them an email before with a pre survey and send them a post assessment survey that they should answer to recieve their certificate.

For our media campaign , we elavuate by tracking the number of views, reads and shares for our articles, posters and video.

For our posters we calculate the number of posters that were posted ( target 400 posters)