Our National Hub in Brazil is based at the Faculdade de Medicina of the University of São Paulo. Led by Professor Anna Levin and Professor Silvia Costa, the team in Brazil focus on antibiotic prescribing decision support in the community, antibiotic prescribing interventions in a heterogeneous urban population in primary care, and surveillance of wastewater and asymptomatic carriers for measuring impact. The city of São Caetano do Sul, a part of the greater São Paulo, has 165,000 inhabitants. It is participating actively in the study, involving its entire primary care system.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is considered an increasing threat to public health and a cause of great concern worldwide. Communities in Brazil, like many countries in the global south, are disproportionately affected by AMR, and so our Brazil National Hub is vital in addressing this problem from within those communities.
With particularly strong research expertise in medicine and nursing, our hub in Brazil has strong links with the 600+ hospitals in the state of São Paulo, as well as across primary care providers. CAMO-Net also benefits from our Brazil hub’s research excellence in healthcare associated infections and AMR.
The team in Brazil specialise in infection prevention and control, PK/PD modelling, and antimicrobial stewardship programmes. Our Brazil Hub has particular expertise in AMR in the environment and how it interacts with human populations across different social settings.
Our work in Brazil is moving quickly. In just a short space of time, we have collected samples to test for antimicrobials and antimicrobial resistant microbes from wastewater, drinking water, and streams around São Caetano do Sul (with special thanks to our partners at the University of São Caetano do Sul and the very helpful people at the Prefeitura Municipal de São Caetano do Sul). We have set up a microbiology database of 11 primary care units and the clinical laboratory, worked with the coordinator for healthcare to develop guidelines for managing infections in primary care, and carried out qualitative research with health workers and patients in São Caetano do Sul to further understand the attitudes of people around antibiotics.
Our next steps are to use these findings to develop a tool to assist healthcare workers when treating patients with infections. Our Brazil hub has also worked closely with our Uganda hub to take advice and guidance on sharing the knowledge gained from these activities.
It has been a busy first few months of the CAMO-Net collaboration in Brazil. We hope our interventions and training programmes will make a meaningful impact towards the global effort of addressing AMR. Starting with São Caetano do Sul, and more widely São Paulo and the rest of Brazil, our work here will ultimately benefit all communities around the world to deal with infections in a more sustainable way.
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