Antimicrobial Resistance Campaign – Greece (HelMSIC)

Name of the activity: Antimicrobial Resistance Campaign

Country/NMO: Greece (HelMSIC)

Program: Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign

Focus area:

Reduce incidence of Antimicrobial Resistance

Problem statement:

Greece is one of the leading Counties in the EU on Antimicrobial Resistance and is the first in the total use of antibiotics. Also there is a lack of knowledge and comprehensive awareness between medical students and healthcare professionals about AMR as it is not included in the medical curriculum and it is partially taught. Resistant microbes are responsible for 1000 deaths and 5000 severe hospital aquired infections in Greece annually.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Target Groups: Medical students, Healthcare Professionals, students from other specialties (pharmacy, biology, veterinary)
Beneficiaries: Patients and the general public will be benefited as future doctors will be sesibilised on AMR.

Objectives and indicators of success:

The main objectives are:
To educate medical students, health care professionals and the general public on antimicrobial resistance
Show empasis on the harmful effects og antibiotic misuse in Greece and globally
To equip medical students with strategies to reduce the exsesive antibiotic use
To show the importance of prevention of hospital associated infections for AMR
To raise awareness between medical students and healthcare professionals and stimulate them to act against AMR
The success indicators were:
The project is a campaign and thus it is launched mostly on the social media. We evaluated the reach out of our campaign based on how many students readed the posts on our facebook likepage and on how many visitors we had on our website and read the informative articles there.
The most important is that we had a quiz that was testing the students’ knowledge on AMR and at the end of it there were the correct answers and some useful links. The answers to the quiz were more than 500. The quiz was also a useful tool to provide us the lack of knowledge of medical students and thus the specific needs we need to cover in the future.
The willingness of healthcare profesionals to distribute our booklets to their departments

Methodology:

The methods we used on the campaign were:
Social Media Campaign
Informative articles on our website
Med-school action – to educate medical students
Informative posters for medical students (medical school)
Informative posters for the general public (hospital)
Informative booklet for the healthcare proffesionals about AMR and the practices they need to follow from the National Center for Disease Control

Plans for evaluation:

The project is a campaign and thus it is launched mostly on the social media. We evaluated the reach out of our campaign based on how many students readed the posts on our facebook likepage and on how many visitors we had on our website and read the informative articles there. The most important is that we had a quiz that was testing the students’ knowledge on AMR and at the end of it there were the correct answers and some useful links. The answers to the quiz were more than 500. The quiz was also a useful tool to provide us the lack of knowledge of medical students and thus the specific needs we need to cover in the future.