GEAR up team members present at Fleming Fund Fellows Symposium
Earlier this month GEAR up team members were invited to present to Fleming Fund Fellows – policy makers, practitioners and influencers who are participating in a scheme of professional development and capacity strengthening around AMR in Fleming Fund countries. In this blog Katy Davis reports back on the session’s panel discussion .
Gender and equity is one of the Fleming Fund’s key principles, and Toby Leslie – Global Technical Lead for Fleming Fund at Mott Macdonald – emphasised the need for a keen understanding of aspects of AMR relating to gender and equity and how to address these.
Dr Rosie Steege, Lecturer at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and gender and equity lead in GEAR up, introduced the GEAR up consortium, gave a background on principles of gender and equity in infectious disease and presented the initial results of our scoping review and importance of focus on structural drivers of inequities. She emphasised that surveillance data is the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding the drivers of antimicrobial resistance, and that we need greater understanding and focus on the structural equity dimensions of AMR.
Three GEAR up panellists addressed questions on the importance of gender and equity for the work of the Fleming Fund Fellows and addressing AMR more widely:
Abriti Arjyal, research manager at HERD International, Nepal, emphasised the importance of understanding social roles that influence access to power, resources and opportunities when it comes to antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic access and use. She gave examples of where gender roles affect exposure to infection, awareness of AMR and decision-making power and highlighted that there is a limited understanding of how these factors interact at the interface of human, animal and plant health.
Tahmina Ahmed, a Senior Research Associate at BRAC University, Bangladesh, spoke to the importance of surveillance and antimicrobial use data that is disaggregated by factors such as sex and age. She explained how it is essential for understanding context-specific trends and drivers and for effective design of AMR interventions.
Susan Okioma, Lead Gender Technical Advisor at LVCT Health, Kenya, highlighted the importance of a gender and equity lens in policy and decision-making around AMR. She outlined GEAR up’s successes in mainstreaming gender and equity questions and considerations in the most recent Ugandan National Action Plan on AMR and emphasised opportunities to take this approach across Fleming Fund country grantees.
Participants identified gender and equity dimensions in their areas of work across lab, surveillance, policy and practitioners’ perspectives and reiterated the fact that policy makers and practitioners need to work together on equity issues. We answer some of the questions that we received from participants below:
How do gender and equity issues apply to AMR in disasters or emergency response?
In disaster and emergency response contexts, many of the complex social processes of inequity that influence exposure, access to treatment and antibiotic use are particularly exaggerated. For example, access to health systems and to safe water and sanitation are often constrained in disaster contexts, which can create particular exposure for those most likely to be responsible for collecting water or those working as frontline health workers. Women and gender minorities are often more at risk of sexual and gender-based violence in disaster contexts, which affects exposure to and spread of sexually transmitted infections, including resistant infections. Disaster contexts can also lead to significant refugee populations, and those living in refugee camps often have low access to healthcare and high risk of infection due to living conditions.
How is GEAR up inputting to countries’ AMR National Action Plans?
GEAR up seeks to inform countries’ National Action Plans on equity and gender issues that relate to AMR and policy making. This involves engaging with stakeholders to raise awareness around equity and gender dimensions of AMR, reviewing existing National Action Plans or AMR strategies for engagement with equity and gender issues, and building on windows of opportunity to incorporate equity considerations and policies or actions that strive for equity within the AMR space. If you have identified an opportunity to input into the development of a National Action Plan of strategy in your country, please do get in touch.
