March 15, 2017
Antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) implementation in humanitarian settings is a new endeavour – Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) introduced an ASP within a hospital in Amman, Jordan, where patients from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen with chronic, often multidrug-resistant, infections related to war are managed. Antibiotics were reviewed, and real-time recommendations were made to optimise choice, dose, duration, and route by a small team. Over the first year of implementation, acceptance of the ASP’s recommendations improved. When compared with the year prior to implementation, antibiotic cost in 2014 declined considerably from approximately $252,077 (average, $21,006/month) to
