The International FAO Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring (InFARM) System
Guide for reporting information on antimicrobial use in plants
InFARM, an FAO flagship initiative led by under the FAO's Animal Health and Production Division (NSA), provides tools, capacity building activities and a digital platform for collecting, visualizing and making use of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) data in animals and food. Last year marked the launch of the first open call for data. The FAO's Plant Production and Protection Division (NSP) leads the AMR in the plant sector.InFARM is extending its activities with the development of the questionnaire for the collection of data on antimicrobial use (AMU) in plants. This expansion is the result of coordinated efforts between NSP, and the One Health and AMR cluster under NSA (hosting the InFARM system coordination), recognizing the need to participate in global efforts for One Health integrated surveillance. InFARM is also bridging an important data gap by enabling data interoperability with other global systems (WHO-GLASS, collecting AMU and AMR data in humans, and WOAH-ANIMUSE, collecting AMU data in animals) and its future contribution to the upcoming Quadripartite system for integrated AMR/AMU surveillance (GISSA).The purpose of this publication is to support countries to use the new questionnaire on antimicrobial use in plants for reporting to InFARM. It covers why it is important to take part in this data collection and how to properly gather and report data to the InFARM IT platform.
