A descriptive model featuring expansive clinical microbiology approaches and antimicrobial stewardship to control antimicrobial resistance in low- and middle-income countries

Abstract

The upsurge and escalation of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a major worry on the global scene. Effective antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs are critical to combat this challenge, and applied knowledge in clinical microbiology serves as the cornerstone for the successful implementation. Despite technological advances, many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) still adopt traditional phenotypic techniques in clinical microbiology laboratories. An expansive implementation of clinical microbiology approaches can bridge this apparent gap. Good laboratory assessment, hospital epidemiology, and infection prevention and control, which are the sub-divisions of the expansive clinical microbiology approaches, can be deployed to implement AMS appropriately in LMICs. In this paper, we describe a model featuring a functional AMS equipped with expansive clinical microbiology approaches to control AMR in LMICs.