Stanford’s Antimicrobial Safety and Sustainability program (SASS) has been designated a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship. This is the first designation of its kind worldwide for antimicrobial stewardship.

Drs. Marisa Holubar and Stan Deresinski will direct the Centre, with the critical support of Emily Mui PharmD, Lina Meng PharmD, and Amy Chang MD, PharmD.

Antimicrobial resistance has become a global health emergency, comparable to that of climate change in complexity, severity, and the urgency necessary to deal with it. The UN Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance in consultation with WHO released a report in April 2019 entitled No Time to Wait: Securing the future from drug-resistant infections. Antimicrobial resistant infections could cause 10 million deaths globally each year by 2050. As a consequence, immediate and coordinated action is needed to avert disaster. A key element of the necessary response is the strict stewardship of antimicrobial use in human medicine, as well as in other domains.

The collaborating centre designation provides a formalized relationship between SASS and WHO, in which SASS will continue to support WHO activities aimed at strengthening Member States’ capacity to contain antimicrobial resistance through the implementation of antimicrobial stewardship. This will include developing training and educational material suitable for global use with an emphasis on improving care in low and middle income countries.

Drs. Holubar and Deresinski answered questions about the Center on the Scope Blog.