Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025474 (Poster 074) | Published: 01 Aug 2025
Abdoul-Salam Ouedraogo1, Mounerou Salou2, Olivier Manigart3,4,&, Souleymane Sore5, Abdourahmane Yacouba6, Yakya Dieye7, Chinelo Ebruke3,4, Isatta Wurie8, Nathalie Guessend9, John Stelling10, Issiaka Sombié3, Abdourahmane Sow7
1Centre Muraz, Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, 2Université de Lomé, Togo, 3Organisation Ouest-Africaine de la Santé (OOAS), Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, 4GFA Consulting Group, Hamburg, Germany, 5Ministère de la santé, Direction des laboratoires de biologie médicale, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 6Laboratoire de Biologie Médicale, Hôpital National Amirou Boubacar Diallo, Niamey, Niger; Faculté des Sciences de la Santé, Université Abdou Moumouni, Niamey, Niger, 7Institut Pasteur Dakar, Sénégal, 8Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences and Diagnostics, College of Medicine and Allied Health Science, Sierra Leone, 9Institut Pasteur de Côte d’Ivoire, 10WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance, Boston, USA
&Corresponding author: Olivier Manigart, Organisation Ouest-Africaine de la Santé (OOAS), Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, GFA Consulting Group, Hamburg, Germany. Email: olivier.manigart@gfa-group.de
Received: 09 May 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 01 Aug 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Antimicrobial Resistance
Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), One Health, Surveillance systems, Capacity building
©Abdoul-Salam Ouedraogo et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Abdoul-Salam Ouedraogo et al., Strengthening antimicrobial resistance surveillance in the West African region: A report on the activities of the WAHO Regional Technical Working Group. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00218. https://doi.org/10.37432/jieph-confpro5-00218
A regional Technical Working Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR-TWG), grounded in the One Health approach, was established in 2018 following an assessment of AMR surveillance systems in West Africa. It’s inaugural meeting in 2019 resulted in a regional roadmap and standardized data collection tools. These were technically validated in 2021 and formally endorsed by the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers in May 2022 in Accra
The roadmap, structured around five strategic pillars, aims to harmonize AMR surveillance approaches across ECOWAS member states and support the development of integrated national action plans. Bimonthly virtual and in-person AMR-TWG meetings were held to identify and coordinate priority interventions. Capacity-building efforts focused on key areas such as stakeholder engagement, formation of national AMR task forces, technical training for bacteriology staff, and improved data management. These activities were further strengthened through collaboration with the “West African Regional Initiative for Laboratories” led by the Institut Pasteur de Dakar.
Since 2019, four in-person AMR-TWG meetings have helped define and update regional priorities. A 2022 workshop improved WHONET data entry capacity. A list of priority bacteria was validated for the region. Advocacy and technical training missions were conducted in four countries. External Quality Assessment panels are now distributed to eleven countries. Seven national reference laboratories have received bacteriology equipment through the PROALAB project. As a result, eleven countries are now enrolled into and four are submitting AMR data to the WHO GLASS platform. Eleven countries are also enrolled in InFARM and are submitting data for One Health.
Menu