Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future - Safeguarding Health, Food, and Trade

World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week 18 - 24 Nov., 2025

- By VIMLENDRA SHARAN, FAO Representative in Sri Lanka and the Maldives

Each November, World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week (WAAW) reminds us that the antimicrobials protecting human, animal, and plant health are losing efficacy at an alarming rate and brings global attention to the urgent threat posed by antimicrobial resistance. This year’s campaign will be observed from 18 - 24 November 2025 under the theme “Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future”. This theme underscores the critical need for coordinated One Health action across sectors to protect medicines that sustain health, food systems and trade.

The Global AMR Crisis: Numbers That Demand Action

The epidemiological reality is stark: drug-resistant infections contributed to nearly 5 million deaths globally in 2019, with 1.27 million deaths directly attributable to AMR. Without urgent intervention, the World Bank projects AMR could trigger USD 1 trillion in additional healthcare costs annually by 2030 and reduce global GDP by 1.1 to 3.8 percent by 2050. Needless to say, lowand middle-income countries will bear the disproportionate burden of this crisis.

Agriculture sector plays a significant role in this dimension - over 70 percent of all antimicrobials sold globally are used in food-producing animals. In Asia, antimicrobial consumption in livestock sector is projected to increase by 66 percent between 2010 and 2030 if stronger stewardship policies are not enforced. This overuse accelerates resistance that can spread through food chains, environment and direct human-animal interfaces.

Recognizing this danger, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) - together known as the Quadripartite Alliance - are leading the global response through the One Health approach, which sees human, animal, and environmental health as inseparable.