Held on 6 & 7 December 2025 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the REACH Network’s first dedicated Independent Advisory Panel (IAP) on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), met to review AMR data from all participating country teams, signalling the importance accorded by the Network to responsible stewardship of effective treatments both now and in the future.
The panel was held to directly address one of the key tenets of the Abuja Declaration of 2024 and brought together world-renowned experts on antimicrobial resistance patterns and development from the Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Key Information, summary and headline recommendations
The eight-member Independent Advisory Panel was convened by the REACH Network and its AMR leads, Dr Dagmar Alber, of University College London, and Prof Stephen Obaro, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Prior to the independent panel’s meeting, delegates heard from representatives of REACH country teams, key local and international stakeholders.
The two-day gathering culminated in a set of evidence-based, actionable recommendations to strengthen AMR monitoring efforts and ensure the long-term sustainability of surveillance systems in participating countries.
The panel’s headline recommendations included integrating AMR and mortality surveillance, standardizing operation procedures for conducting cross-sectional surveys, the establishment of minimum datasets for reporting AMR surveillance, the identification of key pathogens for AMR phenotypic surveillance and recommendations around genomic analysis.
