Antimicrobial stewardship in Malaysia and Bhutan

​The National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship (NCAS) is collaborating with two teaching hospitals in Malaysia, the University Malaya Medical Centre and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre, on a project titled ‘Implementation of the National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) and identification of targets for quality improvement in two tertiary teaching hospitals in Malaysia’ (2019-20, funded by Joint Commission).

The NAPS is a nationally-implemented quality audit of antimicrobial prescribing in Australian hospitals and is used to meet Australian hospital accreditation standards.

It is coordinated by the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and supported by the Commonwealth Department of Health via the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

The lead for the Malaysian study, Associate Professor Sasheela Sri La Sri Ponnampalavanar​, is a consultant infectious diseases physician, and head of infection control and antimicrobial stewardship at the University Malaya Medical Centre in Malaysia.

NCAS clinicians and researchers were also part of a team from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital) who visited Bhutan in March 2019 for a training program funded by the Fleming Fund in the UK.

The Australian team delivered a series of One Health workshops covering diagnostics and stewardship practices, and will host clinical fellows from Bhutan for an intensive training program in late 2019.