Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not only a major health topic for the United Nation’s (UN) high-level meetings and the World Health Assembly (WHA), but also an integral part of the “Healthy Asia-Pacific 2020 Roadmap Initiative”, the Health Working Group’s Work Plan, and the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan. In response to the growing awareness of AMR around the globe, and to increase Taiwan’s international presence, Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) proposed the AMR conference to APEC in the HWG meeting in 2017, and successfully secured the opportunity to hold the conference, which is scheduled to be held at Cathay Financial Conference Hall in Taipei, on September 20 and 21.

To win over member economies’ support and to obtain the opportunity to hold the APEC conference, Taiwan CDC sent delegates to APEC HWG meeting in 2017 to propose the project, and presented Taiwan’s experiences in implementing a national antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP), establishing AMR surveillance and monitoring systems, and improving the capacity of antimicrobial usage and AMR surveillance mechanisms. In the fierce competition among 14 proposals submitted by 7 member economies, Taiwan’s proposal ranked first place.

31 experts and delegates from Australia, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam will be attending the conference. These international attendees will join Taiwan’s domestic experts in the conference, to share and exchange experiences on the topics of strengthening surveillance and laboratory capacity to combat AMR, policies to promote ASP, and infection control strategies to contain AMR.