Fighting antimicrobial resistance: 32 projects leading the charge

When medicines stop working, lives are at risk. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens decades of medical progress and demands urgent global action. As the world marks World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week under the banner Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future, Global Health EDCTP3 highlights a growing portfolio of research designed to tackle AMR where the need is greatest.

Scaling research to match the global challenge

With 32 projects now signed, backed by €165.4 million in funding and involving 184 participating entities across 47 countries, Global Health EDCTP3 is building a significant collaborative effort against AMR in Africa and Europe.

Together, these projects represent a coordinated scientific response at a scale urgently needed to confront AMR. By integrating clinical research, advanced diagnostics, genomic surveillance, and strong African–European partnerships, Global Health EDCTP3 is helping ensure that effective treatments remain available for generations to come. Here are three examples:

UTI-Diag: smarter diagnosis, fewer antibiotics

Urinary tract infections affect millions each year, but in many low-resource settings, diagnosis relies on symptoms alone, leading to incorrect treatment in about one-third of cases and fuelling antibiotic resistance.

The UTI-Diag project is testing new point-of-care tools in Cameroon and Senegal, including rapid protein-based tests, molecular detection of resistance genes, and digital decision-support platforms. Early estimates suggest these innovations could reduce misdiagnosis from 33% to 5%, cutting treatment failures and healthcare costs by up to 40%.

SNIP-AFRICA: improving newborn care

Neonatal infections remain a major cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. The SNIP-AFRICA project is establishing adaptive platform trials to rapidly identify effective treatments for newborn infections in a context where AMR is rising fast. This innovative trial design enables faster, more flexible testing of therapies to bring better care to some of the most vulnerable patients.

ODIN: tracking resistance through wastewater

The ODIN project is developing a genomic surveillance system to monitor pathogens and antimicrobial resistance in community wastewater and other environmental samples. By detecting early signals of infectious threats, ODIN will help countries respond more quickly to outbreaks and track resistance patterns beyond clinical settings.