It’s Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week!
By Celia Burns on 24th November 2025
Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week takes place every November across the globe. It aims to raise awareness of the growing threat of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
It’s a week focused on understanding a problem that affects everyone, but one where small everyday choices genuinely make a difference.
What are antimicrobials and what is AMR?
Antimicrobials are medicines that treat infections caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Antibiotics are the most familiar example.
Over time, microbes can adapt and learn to survive these medicines. This is antimicrobial resistance (AMR). When it happens, treatments become less effective, infections are harder to cure, and complications become more likely.
Why Is AMR Awareness Important?
Safe surgery, cancer treatment, and care for vulnerable people all rely on effective antimicrobial medicine. Many killer infections of the early 20th century are no longer killers only because of effective antibiotics.
But more infections are failing to respond to standard treatments, making them more serious and harder to manage. We are facing a future in which routine surgery and minor infections become far more dangerous.
AMR is a global issue – The recent Covid 19 pandemic illustrated how fast disease-causing microbes can spread. The same is true of bacteria resistant to antimicrobials – these can spread between people, animals, and the environment, affecting communities worldwide. Microbes that are resistant to antimicrobials tend to displace the non-resistant ones, meaning increasing numbers of infections are hard to treat.
You can help!
Small actions help slow resistance, such as:
- Using antibiotics only when prescribed
- Taking them exactly as directed
- Never sharing leftovers
- Not pressurising your doctor or dentist to prescribe antibiotics
- Disposing of leftovers by taking them to the pharmacy for disposal.
- Practising good hygiene to avoid infections
AMR Awareness Week isn’t about alarm; it’s about understanding and action. By using antibiotics responsibly and preventing infections, we help protect these vital medicines for ourselves and future generations.
