Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) exists everywhere and challenging countries globally. It is impacting global health security, livelihoods and economies across sectors. Low income countries are bearing disproportionately the negative impacts of AMR compounded already with high burden of infectious diseases associated with poor healthcare systems, inadequate sanitation, limited access to safe water and resource constraints. Ethiopia had recognized and started fighting AMR as early as 2008 by conducting AMR baselines assessments and follow on strategies. It has updated for the third time a five years One Health (OH) AMR Prevention and Containment Strategic Plan, 2021-25 and officially launched in November 2021 to guide the country’s efforts in fighting antimicrobial resistance. Within its limited resource envelope, Ethiopia is implementing its AMR national plan across the five strategic objectives and sectors. The plan is aligned to the Global Action Plan against antimicrobial resistance.

Recognizing the important role of monitoring and evaluation of the national OH AMR strategic and action plans, an M&E training focusing on AMR was conducted from 6 to 9 March 2023. This training has followed the M&E needs assessment to strengthen the capacity of the OH focal experts and AMR advisory committee members drawn from  Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Ministry of Health, Environment Protection Authority, Ethiopian Agriculture Authority, Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority, National Veterinary Institute, Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Armauer Hansen Research Institute, Animal Health Institute, Addis Ababa University, and from UN agencies and  development partners such as FAO, WHO, WOAH, USAID-Medicines, Technologies, and Pharmaceutical Services.

The training aimed at equipping Ethiopian OH AMR focal experts and advisory committee members with the necessary skills and tools pertaining to M & E in general and AMR in particular so as to enable follow the progresses and performance of AMR strategic and action plans implementation across sectors.

It was organized in an interactive manner where brief presentations followed by group exercises, and panel discussions. The following are the main topics covered; basics of monitoring and evaluation; setting AMR M & E indicators, baselines and targets; AMR logic models and frameworks; AMR M & E data management, analysis, reporting; and utilizing the information.  

His Excellency Dr Fikru Regassa, the State Minister for Livestock Services of the Ministry of Agriculture, officially opened the training. He stressed the important role of M & E training in strengthening the capacity of participants around AMR data collection, analysis, reporting, and evaluation. Specifically, he highlighted external evaluation on the implementation and performance of the national OH AMR Prevention and Containment Strategic plan which has been implemented for more than a decade.  He reiterated that the M&E training has come at the right time, likely to benefit stakeholders at national, subnational and institutional levels. Finally, he thanked the global AMR MPTF quadripartite agencies (FAO-UNEP-WHO-WOAH) and country teams for the excellent coordination, organization and delivery of this training.

The training provided a platform to provide inputs for the development of an M&E plan and finalization of the results framework. The participants had the opportunity of applying what they have learnt to develop outcome and impact statements and their associated performance indicators. Although the current AMR Prevention and Containment Strategy is now on the third year of its implementation, the training helped participants to re-review indicator baselines and targets for outcome indicators and impact performance indicators.  To ensure AMR stakeholders’ ownership of the AMR strategic plan implementation process, sectors from human health, agriculture and environment identified their needs to develop a sustainable system to monitor the activities and evaluate their performances.