Among the various interventions recommended in the WHO Global Strategy for Antimicrobial Resistance, antimicrobial consumers (patients and the general community) were identified as a priority intervention group for education regarding appropriate use of antimicrobials in order to minimize the development of antimicrobial resistance.This is especially relevant in most low- and middle-income countries where antimicrobials are unregulated and freely available without a prescription and used inappropriately in an informal healthcare system. 

Consumer demand is fueled with self-medication and awareness of AMR aspects is often poor. Designing and evaluating the effectiveness of consumer-focused interventions requires quantifying the knowledge and use of antimicrobials in the general community. This can only be done with a nationally representative household survey such as the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) implemented by ORC Macro’s Measure DHS project in collaboration with various national and international partners.

There is no population based AMR module and in order to fill this gap, RPM Plus has collaborated with ORC Macro to develop, design and field test the AMR module.

The DHS-AMR module was developed through a series of expert group discussion between MSH/RPM Plus, ORC Macro and USAID.  Subsequently, the draft AMR module was circulated among global experts for review. Feedback was obtained and many acknowledged that data from such a module will be very useful for community level intervention.

Information generated from the DHS-AMR module is crucial for spearheading advocacy, establishing policy, developing interventions, and evaluating efforts for AMR containment among the general community.

RPM Plus will be field testing the DHS-AMR module in one country to validate the questions and ensure its reliability. Subsequently, the module will be further revised based on the field test and finalized. The final DHS-AMR module will be made available on the DHS website among other available modules.