Launch of the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Anti-Microbial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) Initiative

Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) continues to be a threat to global human and veterinary health. In a recent meeting at Wilton Park, the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Canadian government’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) announced the launch of InnoVet-AMR – a £16 million partnership that will fund new research to generate Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Anti-Microbial Resistance.

During the meeting experts from across the globe discussed the range of issues affecting anti-microbial use in livestock and aquaculture in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs). These discussions included explorations of the reasons for anti-microbial use in farming systems, current limitations on alternatives to anti-microbials for application in LMIC farming systems and the deficits that constrain the use of alternatives to anti-microbials in LMIC contexts. A key feature of these discussions included the absence of vaccines against some veterinary pathogens and also the difficulties in making the vaccines that do exist available to farmers in LMICs in an affordable and sustainable manner. The discussions were far-reaching and emphasised that coherent strategies to address this most urgent global challenge were likely to be complex and multi-faceted, requiring inputs from experts of a broad range of disciplines and sectors.

DHSC/IDRC will be releasing a funding call in the summer of 2018 for collaborative research projects to develop ‘Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial resistance’. It is likely that the call will welcome projects that look to generate novel vaccines (and to understand the fundamental science that is needed to generate these) as well as projects that look to increase the deployment and utilisation of vaccines that currently exist. Further information of InnoVet-AMR can be found here.

We would encourage all IVVN members to begin to consider how their research could contribute to tackling this global problem and to begin to formulate potential projects and identify the necessary collaborators. We will keep you up to date with developments of this call and once the details of the call have been made available, the IVVN will try to support any members who wish to submit applications.