The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have been working together for years to address risks at the human-animal-ecosystems interface and their collaborative work was formally laid down in 2010 in the FAO/OIE/WHO Tripartite Concept Note. This Note continues to be a reference for the Tripartite on the shared responsibilities for addressing health risks through multi-sectoral collaboration. In May 2018, FAO, WHO and OIE also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen their long-standing partnership, with a renewed focus on tackling AMR.
The 24th Tripartite (FAO/OIE/WHO collaboration on AMR) Annual Executive Meeting held in February 2018 agreed on the long-term vision to a Tripartite Integrated System for Surveillance on Antimicrobial Resistance and Use (TISSA)) . An initial step towards TISSA is the establishment of a dynamic IT Platform.
The TISSA IT platform intends to make available in a user-friendly manner on a global and regional basis (with country level envisioned for future iterations) validated, publiclyavailable and official data provided by countries to FAO, OIE and WHO on patterns and trends in antimicrobial use (AMU) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans, animals, food, plants and environment, while recognizing that different sectors may be at different levels of advancement of data collection. The platform should progressively allow incorporation of information from other surveillance systems as well as future harmonization of data across sectors to embrace a “One Health” approach recognizing that human health, animal health, plant health and the environment are interconnected.
All three organizations FAO, OIE and WHO manage their own separate surveillance programs and systems concerning AMR and AMU data. The surveillance programs in the scope of TISSA are the following:
- FAO – InFARM (International FAO Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring data platform) (Global system in inception phase)for the surveillance/monitoring of the resistance on animals, food (animal and plant origin), food production environment, and use of antimicrobial pesticides in crops;
- OIE – AMU: for the surveillance/monitoring of antimicrobial use in animals;
- WHO – GLASS-AMR: for the surveillance/monitoring of the resistance in humans;
- WHO – GLASS-AMC: for the surveillance/monitoring of the antibiotic consumption in humans;
- WHO – ESBL E.coli GLASS-Tricycle: for the combined surveillance concerning the resistance of bacteria in food chain, human and environment.
The surveillance/monitoring programmes and areas of data collection of each organization, although at different stages, are still evolving. The starting point for TISSA is to import relevant pieces of informationfrom each surveillance program as well as provide a flexible approach to expand the surveillance activities and indicators for future needs.