Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which occurs when pathogens no longer respond to antimicrobials like antibiotics, is among the top 10 global public health threats today. Despite the magnitude of this threat, current countermeasures to AMR are uneven, do not advance equity and lack sustainability. While global AMR response has been successful in raising policy awareness of this growing threat, the burden of AMR continues to weigh heavily on the marginalised and disenfranchised. The uneven burden of drug-resistant infections, exposure to antimicrobial pollution and AMR in the environment, and livelihood risks, warrants more serious consideration by both public and private actors to jointly address health, inequality, and environmental implications of AMR.
The Just Transitions for AMR (JTAMR) Working Group has been convened by the British Academy to consider a transitions framework that allows those concerned with AMR to move beyond the immediacy of averting drug-resistance and to start thinking about a future in which humanity lives more sustainably with microbial ecosystems. This framework supports inquiry into what forms of injustices underpin current approaches to living with microbes and to consider underexplored pathways of managing disease. It is intended to serve as a starting point for discussions on AMR responses that prioritise justice, sustainability, inclusivity and equity in the planning for a future with AMR. In this workshop, members of the JTAMR Working Group presents the ethical underpinning of the JTAMR framework and three different framings that it enables: on the production of scientific knowledge; on indigenous knowledge; and on microbial relations.