ISLAMABAD: Health officials and infectious disease experts revealed at a meeting held at the Ministry of National Health Services on Monday that A n t i m i e r o b i a 1 Resistance (AMR) has emerged as the number one cause of death in Pakistan, killing over one million people annually.

Of these, at least 300,000 deaths are directly caused by drugresistant infections, while approximately 700,000 people die due to complications resulting from ineffective antibiotic treatments.

Citing an alarming rise in untreatable infections, health experts and ministry officials called for the immediate implementation of Pakistan`s second National Action Plan (NAP 2.0) to combat AMR. A Technical Working Group (TWG) was established under the leadership of Prof Javed Akram, a leading physician and founding president of the Pakistan Society of Internal Medicine (PSIM), to spearhead antimicrobial stewardship effortsnationwide.

The meeting followed the National AMS Summit held in Karachi on May 19, where a national declaration was signed by the Ministry of Health, Health Services Academy, NIH, and Getz Pharma to renew their commitment to AMR containment.

Building on that momentum, the Islamabad session finalised plans for rolling out the AMR curriculum, launching the TWG, and scaling up training and public education programmes.

Presiding over the session, Director General Health Dr Shabana Saleem warned that without urgent reforms, all available antibiotics in Pakistan could soon become ineffective.

`If AMR is not addressed now, people will start dying from minor infections due to the absence of effective antibiotics,` she cautioned. Stressing that over 95pc of antibiotics were used at the primary care level, she emphasised the need to train general physicians and raise awareness among the public.

She also noted irrational use of antibioticscategorised in the WHO `watch group` at tertiary care hospitals and urged swift implementation of NAP 2.0 in collaboration with stakeholders.

Prof Javed Akram described AMR as Pakistan`s top health crisis, followed closely by hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). `Patients admitted for successful surgeries often succumb to infections caused by extremely drug-resistant pathogens. Even attendants-healthy individuals-sometimes contract these infections and die,` he said, emphasising that such resistant bacteria often originate in hospitals due to indiscriminate antibiotic use, only to be carried into communities through hospital sewage and vectors like houseflies.

Prof Akram proposed that the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) be transformed into a model hospital for AMR control.

He also called for stringent regulation of quacks, who are widely blamed for the misuse and overuse of antibiotics.

Health Services Academy (HSA) officials shared that they were in the final stages of devel-oping a comprehensive AMR curriculum. Their goal is to train at least 1,500 general physicians by the end of this year and around 15,000 professionals over the next three years.

President of the PakistanIslamicMedicalAssociation (PIMA) Prof.

Atif Hafeez and Sindh Healthcare Commission CEO Dr. Ahson Qavi emphasised integrating AMR education at the undergraduate medical level to ensure young doctors avoid irrational prescribing practices.Dr. Mahvish Ansari and Abdullah Abro of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap), Prof. Nasim Akhtar from Pims, Dr.

Omera Naseer from NIH, and other key stakeholders also participated in the meeting.