SDG #3 is to “To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.”
Within SDG #3 are 13 targets, of which we here focus on Target 3.d:
Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks.
Target 3.d has two indicators:
Indicator 3.d.1: International Health Regulations (IHR) capacity and health emergency preparedness
Indicator 3.d.2: Percentage of bloodstream infections due to selected antimicrobial resistant organisms.
This target and indicators look at the security aspects of health, inclusive of emergency management, aiming to increase the ability of all World Health Organisation member states to prepare for public health emergencies, such as the world has experienced with COVID-19.
Much of how World Health Organisation states-parties are to behave in relation to one another to prevent global pandemics is guided by the WHO’s International Health Regulations, as mentioned in this target’s first indicator. The respective WHO states-parties are obliged to self-report each year on their adherence and capacities for the International Health Regulations.
The self-assessment tool has 15 indications for WHO members, ranging from legislation; financing; zoonotic diseases of human-animal crossover, which account for 75% of emerging pathogens; coordination between countries to notify the WHO of events which pose a global health risk; food safety, and preventing and controlling infections, among others. Further, each country is to post their self-assessment in fulfilling the International Health Regulations online via the public e-SPAR platform.
The second indicator of this target looks at bloodstream infections due to selected antimicrobial-resistant organisms. These organisms include a variety of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus which is resistant to the antibiotic methicillin, a type of penicillin. Also, the bacterium E. coli. produces an enzyme which is resistant to a type of antibiotics called cephalosporins.
One of the methods clinical laboratories can use to test whether a microorganism may be susceptible to antibiotics is known as a broth microdilution. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites change in the ways by which drugs once used to treat against them either have less efficacy or no longer work. The greater difficulty caused by treating infections of such microorganisms in turn can be the cause of greater infectivity and spread of disease, as well as the possibility of such diseases being more fatal.
One of the initiatives the World Health Organization exercises against this threat is the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) to help countries surveil for such developments of drug resistance in known microorganisms.
For the second indicator of this target, the global share of Staphylococcus aureus infections resistant to methicillin stood at 31% as of 2021, up from 20% in 2016. E. coli infections resistant to cephalosporins stands at a global total of 39% in 2021, up from 35% in 2016, and experiencing an almost doubling in 2018, before coming back down.
