POLICY BRIEF article
Front. Trop. Dis.
Sec. Antimicrobial Resistance
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fitd.2025.1634182
This article is part of the Research TopicAntimicrobial Resistance Response Perspectives in AfricaView all 9 articles
Potential activities to improve primary care prescribing of antibiotics across Africa
Provisionally accepted
Audrey Chigome1*
Nishana Ramdas1
Stephen Campbell1,2
Márió Gajdács3Israel Abebrese Sefah4Ester Hango5
Amos Massele6
Brian Godman1,7,8*
Johanna Catharina Meyer1- 1Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University Faculty of Health Sciences, Pretoria, South Africa
- 2The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 3University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary
- 4University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana
- 5University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia
- 6Hubert Kairuki Memorial University, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- 7Laboratory Medicine Clinical Pharmacology, Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
- 8St George's University of London, London, United Kingdom
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Considerable concerns with AMR across Africa, enhanced by inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics in ambulatory care. This includes prescribing for self-limiting conditions and Watch antibiotics. Inappropriate prescribing is enhanced by concerns with ambulatory care prescribers’ knowledge of antibiotics including their perceived effectiveness for self-limiting conditions, AMR and ASPs. Appropriate education of prescribers, including surrounding the AWaRe system and guidance, which recommends the prescribing of antibiotics with less resistance potential, alongside introducing ASPs in ambulatory care, can help address concerns. This will increasingly include instigating agreed quality indicators, and their monitoring, surrounding the AWaRe system and guidance. Improved surveillance of local resistance patterns can help with appropriately updating antibiotics prescribing guidance, including revising AWaRe guidance based on local patterns. Additional financing is needed to attain national goals
Keywords: antibiotics, AWARE, antimicrobial resistance, Antimicrobial stewardship programs, policy initiatives, Primary Care, sub-Saharan Africa
Received: 23 May 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chigome, Ramdas, Campbell, Gajdács, Sefah, Hango, Massele, Godman and Meyer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Audrey Chigome, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University Faculty of Health Sciences, Pretoria, South Africa
Brian Godman, Laboratory Medicine Clinical Pharmacology, Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.