PREVENT IT | Risk Management and Prevention of Antibiotics Resistance

PREVENT IT Risk Management and Prevention of Antibiotics Resistance is a four-year (2019-2023) Higher Education Capacity Building project (CBHE), co-funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission (2014-2020). The vision of the project is to contribute to a future where every individual is aware of antibiotic resistance and is empowered with the right education to address the issue.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2050 antimicrobial resistance is expected to be the first cause of death, creating more casualties than cancer and diabetes combined. It also highlighted that awareness and understanding of ABR, through effective communication, education, and training should be addressed and improved.

A preliminary study conducted by the PREVENT IT consortium highlighted the absence of academic modules on risk management and prevention of ABR, along with a low awareness in Indian society. European universities are assisting the Indian universities and NGOs to design new curricula on ABR. This project aims at addressing these challenges, by amongst others offering online courses – creating awareness sessions including through social media – setting up a living lab where health science experts, students and health care personnel can be trained.

Coordinated by Chitkara University Punjab, the PREVENT IT Indo-European consortium is composed of four European universities – the Rīga Stradiņš University (Riga, Latvia), the University of Milan (Milan, Italy), the University of Maastricht (Maastricht, the Netherlands) and the Catholic University Portugal (Lisbon, Portugal)– collaborating with five Indian Universities, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Kochi, India), Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (Bhubaneswar, Orissa), Manipal Academy of Higher Education (Manipal, Karnataka), Symbiosis International (deemed) University (Pune, Maharashtra) – and two Indian non-governmental organizations- Rural Institute for People’s Enlightenment (Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh) and Voluntary Health Association of Tripura (Agartala, Tripura).

PREVENT IT curricula: empowering future Indian professionals with updated skills in antibiotics resistance prevention

Developing academic courses on prevention and risk management of antibiotic resistance is the major mission of PREVENT IT. The project aims to develop advanced skills in the future Indian healthcare professionals. The goal is to upgrade the existing study programs, re-tuning the academic modules to the challenges brought by antibiotic resistance. At Chitkara University the academic courses of 12 different undergraduate and postgraduate programs have been revamped thanks to the PREVENT IT project and the grant provided by the European Union. Please visit this link, to consult the courses and the study programs engaged by the project.

To consult all the learning modules developed at the Indian universities implementing the PREVENT IT project, please visit this link.

The project has also conducted additional initiatives. PREVENT IT has successfully attained the following outcomes:

• Empowerment Camps: To foster requisite skills and team building, training activities were organised in India and Europe empowering 842 scholars, students and administrative staff.
• Free Certificate Course: The project successfully launched 5 certificate courses on Antibiotics More than 100 certificates have already been issued, whereas 200 students have already enrolled. The online courses are available on the project’s website www.preventit.in
• Academic outreach: A series of public events (both online and offline) were organized in the form of international workshops, webinars and dissemination events. The webinars reached more than 7500 people, whereas the dissemination events and international workshops had outreach to more than 2230 persons.
• Involvement of civil society organizations: The NGO partners outreached at the community level- creating awareness through a series of workshops and dissemination events. During the events, 30 trainers contributed in training 1326 people during 14 events, including ASHA workers, SHG, farmers, PRI members, students and other stakeholders
• Outreach the Indian society: The team has constantly been working to inform the society over the impact of the antimicrobial resistance. The social media channels of the project have constantly been updated with the latest research articles and news reports. To increase the awareness in the society, PREVENT IT has launched an social media campaign based on animated videos illustrating the causes of the antibiotic resistance and the preventive measures that every person can take. PREVENT IT has raised awareness among more than 25,65,500 people.
• Publications- Research/review papers, Newsletter, Prevent IT Book: The scientific output of PREVENT IT has aided in the development and publication of 20 dissertations and 8 research papers, and 10 informative newsletters. Most importantly, the project has been instrumental in the publication by Taylor & Francis of the interdisciplinary book Antimicrobial Resistance: Collaborative Measure of Control.

To obtain more details about the project outputs, and if you are interested to be involved in the PREVENT IT, please click the button below:

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