Nigeria to benefit from UK funding to tackle antimicrobial resistance

The UK government has announced that state-of-the-art laboratories, cutting-edge disease surveillance systems, and a bigger global workforce to tackle deadly antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will be backed by up to £210 million of funding. This is contained in a statement on Thursday by Atinuke Akande-Alegbe, Senior Communications & Public Diplomacy Officer, at the British High Commission […]

The UK government has announced that state-of-the-art laboratories, cutting-edge disease surveillance systems, and a bigger global workforce to tackle deadly antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will be backed by up to £210 million of funding.

This is contained in a statement on Thursday by Atinuke Akande-Alegbe, Senior Communications & Public Diplomacy Officer, at the British High Commission in Abuja.

The funding – from the government’s UK aid budget – will support the Fleming Fund’s activities to tackle AMR in countries across Asia and Africa over the next three years, helping to reduce the threat it poses to the UK and globally, according to the statement.

It will bolster the surveillance capacity in up to 25 countries where the threat and burden of AMR is highest – including Nigeria, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya, and Papua New Guinea – with more than 250 laboratories set to be upgraded and provided with state-of-the-art equipment.

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Around 1.27 million people around the world die each year due to antimicrobial resistance – where bacteria have evolved so much that antibiotics and other current treatments are no longer effective against infections – with one in five of those deaths in children under five.

In 2019 AMR was found to have caused between 7,000 and 35,000 deaths in the UK alone.