Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial agents. As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents become ineffective and infections become difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

The World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) is a global campaign to raise awareness and understanding of AMR and promote best practices among One Health stakeholders to reduce the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. WAAW is celebrated from 18-24 November every year.

The theme for WAAW 2025 is “Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future.”

This theme underscores the urgent need to take bold, united action to address AMR. AMR is already harming our health, food systems, environment and economies. It’s not a future challenge. It is happening now. Drug-resistant infections are increasing, yet awareness, investment and action are still falling short.

WHO, World AMR Awareness Week 2025

Enjoy this special collection of Special Issues and article selections below in celebration of World AMR Awareness Week 2025.

Special Issues

• Integrated infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship strategies to reduce infection and antimicrobial resistance in healthcare: a global perspective Journal of Hospital Infection

Article collections

Cell Chemical Biology

• Natural products chlorotonils exert a complex antibacterial mechanism and address multiple targets

• Plasmodiumfalciparum protein kinase 6 and hemozoin formation are inhibited by a type II human kinase inhibitor exhibiting antimalarial activity

• Discovery of a Pseudomonas aeruginosa-specific small molecule targeting outer membrane protein OprH-LPS interaction by a multiplexed screen

• Antibiotic target discovery by integrated phenotypic and activity-based profiling of electrophilic fragments

• Pantothenate kinase is an effective target for antifungal therapy

• A cationic amphiphilic drug synergizes with strobilurin fungicides to control fungal-borne plant diseases

Cell Reports

• Mutations in mexT bypass the stringent response dependency of virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

• Exercise-driven gut microbiota alterations enhance colonization resistance against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

• Unveiling the evolution of antimicrobial peptides in gut microbes via foundation-model-powered framework

• EBAMP: An efficient de novo broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptide discovery framework

• Extensive natural variation in bacterial ribosomal drug-binding sites

• Evolution of drug-binding residues in eukaryotic ribosomes

Clinical Infection in Practice

• Carbapenemase-producing Enterobactericeae screening: Focused patient insights

• Enteric fever in a non-endemic setting: Review of cases over a 12-year period at University hospitals Birmingham, UK

• Tools for optimising clinical consultation activity in infection services in the United Kingdom

• Microbial organisms and antibiotic sensitivity patterns in patients with catheter-related bloodstream infections at a tertiary hospital

Clinical Microbiology and Infection

• Complex pathways to ceftolozane-tazobactam resistance in clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates: a genomic epidemiology study

• Plasma microbial cell-free DNA sequencing in transplant and haematologic patients-promise, pitfalls, and path forward

• Comparison of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales colonizing war-affected children from the Gaza Strip and hospitalized children from a national reference center in Qatar: an observational cohort study

• Impact of enhanced infection control and antimicrobial stewardship on infections by Clostridioides difficile, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales: a stepped-wedge cluster intervention study

• How do I manage difficult-to-treat Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections? Key questions for today's clinicians

• War on antimicrobial resistance: high carriage rates of multidrug-resistant bacteria among war-injured Ukrainian refugees

• Challenges and strategies in the treatment of periprosthetic joint infection caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria: a narrative review

• A time series analysis approach to quantify change in antibiotic resistance and antibiotic consumption during COVID-19 epidemics: a multicentre cross-national ecological study on behalf of QUantifying change in Antibiotic Resistance, ANTibiotic use, and INfection control during COVID-19 Epidemics study project

• Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales acquisition following piperacillin-tazobactam versus carbapenem treatment: a propensity-matched cohort study

CMI Communications

• Neighborhood deprivation, antimicrobial resistance, and mortality in patients with Enterobacterales: A retrospective cohort study

• How to establish a hospital wastewater surveillance program for antimicrobial resistance: Current experience and future knowledge gaps

• Antibiotics’ collateral effects on the gut microbiota in the selection of ESKAPE pathogens

• Gut colonisation with extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producing Enterobacteriaceae in vegetarians: A systematic review and meta-analysis

• Ecological strategies to end the war on resistance

IJID One Health

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR): ISID’s global efforts to bring light to the silent pandemic

• Evidence of dengue virus exposure and associated risk factors in Rwanda

• Biosecurity practices in commercial chicken farms: Contributing factors for zoonotic pathogen spread

• Identifying features of sustainability in global health security assessment tools – A document analysis of the IHR JEE and the WOAH PVS

IJID Regions

• Antimicrobial resistance burden estimates from the bottom-up: research priorities for estimating the impact of antimicrobial resistance in Brazil

• Prevalence of Antimicrobial Resistance in Somalia: A Systematic Review

• Molecular characteristics of antimicrobial resistance and biofilm formation of bloodstream infection pathogens isolated from pediatric patients in Ukraine

• Epidemiological trends in serotypes distribution and antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella from humans in Taiwan, 2004-2022

Infection Prevention in Practice

• Evaluation of infection prevention and antibiotic stewardship programs at a tertiary-care hospital in Southwest Ethiopia: An opportunity to leverage the synergy

• Association of antimicrobial consumption with Clostridioides difficile incidence across the departments of an academic medical centre

Infection, Disease & Health

• Evaluating antibiotic prescribing practices for patients with asymptomatic bacteriuria in Saudi Arabia: The need for stewardship initiatives

• Clinical presentation and antibiotic resistance trends of Escherichia coli isolated from clinical samples in South India: A two-year study (2022–2023)

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

• WHO guideline adherence and AWaRe antibiotic use in severe childhood pneumonia in Ethiopia: Associations with treatment outcomes

• Epidemiology of non-central line-associated primary bloodstream infections in a network of Indian hospitals: A prospective surveillance study over 7 years (2017-2024)

• Is migrant status a bacterial sexually transmitted infection risk factor? Prevalence of bacterial sexually transmitted infections in a free-clinic population in France: a monocentric cross-sectional retrospective study

• Shift from Streptococcus pneumoniae to Klebsiella pneumoniae: a 15-year nationwide study of bacterial meningitis in Korea

• Breaking the barrier: Transforming the diagnosis and management of penicillin and cephalosporin allergy in China

Journal of Hospital Infection

• Optimizing Antibiotic Stewardship in United Arab Emirates Hospitals: An Assessment of Programme Structure in Emirates Health Services

• Antimicrobial resistance and the invisible casualties of conflict

• Augmenting approaches to AMR prevention: a case for environmental sustainability within the WHO core components for infection prevention and control

• Training of the global health workforce in antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention and control: an approach to combat antimicrobial resistance

• Antimicrobial resistance situation and control measures in Hong Kong: from a One Health perspective

Journal of Infection

• Real-world utility of antigen-based testing (LumiraDX) for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A/B in an acute hospital emergency care setting: a useful triage tool

• An electronic health record-wide association study to identify populations at increased risk of E. coli bacteraemia

• Cefiderocol resistance surveillance needs deepening: Regional stratification, expanded KPC sampling, and dynamic mechanism tracking

• Epidemiology of resistant bacterial infections in patients with hematological malignancies or undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation in Europe: A systematic review by the European Conference on Infections in Leukemia (ECIL)

Journal of Infection and Public Health

• Post-Pandemic Increase in Pediatric Invasive Pneumococcal Disease Driven by Serotype 3

• Reimagining Public Health: From Reactive Systems to Resilient Futures

• Pneumococcal meningitis in Mexico. Serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance before and after the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in pediatric patients. Results from the GIVEBPVac group

• Two-dimensional nanomaterials for infection control: A comprehensive review

Science in One Health

• Antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella: One Health perspective on global food safety challenges

• Regulating antimicrobial resistance in the environment: analysis of Thailand legal framework and areas for reinforcement

• One Health: governance and regulatory framework for antimicrobial use in Malawi

• Tackling antimicrobial resistance in the food chain under the One Health umbrella: a systems thinking approach with a focus on Jordan

• Air pollution might contribute to antimicrobial resistance: a One Health perspective

• One Health approaches to tackling antimicrobial resistance

• Emergence of plasmid-mediated tigecycline resistance tet(X4) gene in Enterobacterales isolated from wild animals in captivity

• A bibliometric analysis of One Health approach in research on antimicrobial resistance

• Extended spectrum cephalosporin (ESC) resistant Escherichia coli: trends and seasonality in the Netherlands from 2014 to 2022

• An agent-based model for collaborative learning to combat antimicrobial resistance: proof of concept based on broiler production in Senegal

• Multi-modal deep learning based on multi-dimensional and multi-level temporal data can enhance the prognostic prediction for multi-drug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis patients

• One Health approaches adapted in low resource settings to address antimicrobial resistance

Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease

• Travel-associated carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales: Epidemiology and risk factors in a Finnish cohort

• Preliminary screening of ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae carriage among migrant communities in Klang Valley, Malaysia

• A preliminary analysis of hand disinfection use by travellers and their colonisation-risk with multi-resistant bacteria: A proof-of-concept study

• The Italian network for severe malaria treatment (NOMAL): epidemiology, clinical presentation, management and outcomes in a non-endemic setting

• Human gut microbiota composition associated with international travels

Trends in Microbiology

• Antibiotic effects on the gut microbiome across diverse geographies

• Pseudomonas aeruginosa: persistence beyond antibiotic resistance

• Unlocking antimicrobial resistance with multiomics and machine learning

• Antimicrobial efflux and biofilms: an interplay leading to emergent resistance evolution

• The role of cyclic nucleotides in bacterial antimicrobial resistance and tolerance

• Environmental microbiome, human fungal pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance

Trends in Parasitology

• Antiparasitics discovery: from genotype to phenotype to compounds

• Malaria parasite phenotypic heterogeneity and the power of single-cell technologies

• Ascarids and One Health: Emerging Challenges in Sustainable Control

• A 'green' toolbox: non-chemotherapeutic approaches for gastrointestinal nematode control in ruminants

• Integrating metabolomics into the diagnosis and investigation of anthelmintic resistance