State-of-the-art antimicrobial susceptibility testing laboratory at the CGIAR AMR Hub led by ILRI

By Ekta Patel

The CGIAR Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Hub (the ‘Hub’), a global research and development partnership that aims to mitigate agricultural-associated antimicrobial resistance risks in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), has recently established an antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) Centre of Excellence. AST will help close knowledge gaps that exist on AMR in LMICs and provide the scientific information policymakers need to develop action plans to combat the rise of AMR.

Antimicrobials are agents that either kill or inhibit the growth of microorganisms like bacteria or fungi. They are critical for curing infections and improving both human and animal health and welfare. However, the indiscriminate use of antimicrobials can lead to the emergence of antimicrobial resistant organisms, which can’t be effectively treated if they infect humans or animals. Reduced treatment options and a shortage of new antimicrobials affect global efforts to improve public health, food security and the livelihoods of those in LMICs. The World Bank estimates that increasing AMR could reduce global animal productivity by 7.5% within the decade.

Before AST can be performed, the bacteria species must be identified. Traditionally, bacterial identification is done by a series of biochemical tests, which could take up to two days. The Hub has an instrument that performs a high-throughput technology known as matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry or MALDI-TOF MS, which is a significant improvement as bacteria can now be identified within seconds. Moreover, this instrument can be also be used to identify fungi and arthropods such as ticks. The AST also has a Sensititre System enabling it to quantify antimicrobial resistance, which is relevant to understand AMR risks and treatment options. 

MALDI-TOF MS will allow users across the continent to identify bacterial species within seconds.

Led and hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya, the Hub brings together four CGIAR centres, namely the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), WorldFish, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and ILRI, as well as key partners in several CGIAR research programs. The Hub builds on five research pillars to address antimicrobial use, understand AMR transmission dynamics, implement locally relevant interventions, support evidence-based policy dialogue and build capacity.

CGIAR AMR Hub media sensitization activity held on 15 November 2019 at ILRI campus, Nairobi, Kenya.

The AST Centre of Excellence is one of several key advantages the Hub, as a state-of-the-art diagnostics facility, offers researchers worldwide. Located in Nairobi, Kenya, the Hub is uniquely placed to help survey and identify potential AMR threats in the global South. The Hub will help build scientific capacity and nurture partnerships throughout the continent.

AMR transmission has not been studied comprehensively in developing countries, whose societies, agricultural practices, institutions and economies differ in important ways from the richer countries of the global North. Understanding these contexts is critical, because simply replicating policies developed in the North for controlling AMR may have severe, unintended consequences for animals and for people’s livelihoods in the developing world.

The World Bank estimates that increasing AMR could reduce global animal productivity by 7.5% within the decade.

Robert Skov, scientific director for the International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions in Denmark, a partner to the AST Centre of Excellence, says, ‘The CGIAR AMR Hub represents a significant improvement of AMR activities across the CGIAR network, both as knowledge centre and for coordination of cross-centre activities.’

Skov added that both the AST Centre of Excellence and the CGIAR AMR Hub in general can help countries translate their policies into practices. Supporting the prudent use of antibiotics in the food chain can foster best practices solutions such as sustainable, climate-smart agriculture.

‘Knowledge of AMR within agricultural systems remains weak in most low- and middle-income countries, and the Hub can thus be a major collaborative partner for countries in the region’, says Skov.

Arshnee Moodley, the team leader of the Hub, says, ‘This is a very exciting time. We are not only strategically placed to address AMR gaps in low- and middle-income countries, but are also working with world-class partners like the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and EUCAST Development Laboratory which can serve as serve as knowledge and training resources’

Foreword

We are publishing the 2019 annual report of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) during a global pandemic whose impacts on human health and the global economy have already proven catastrophic. Both COVID-19 and recent events around the world have shown that inequalities of various kinds—social, racial and economic, among others—remain powerful forces that need to be addressed. At ILRI, we are committed to ensuring that our research on livestock contributes in a multitude of ways to addressing the current crisis, from preventing future pandemics to helping those most impacted by the present one. We are working on livestock solutions that help re-ignite economies, support health and nutrition, and build up sustainable and resilient food systems in the poorer parts of the world.

This report’s focus on gender is especially timely. Few societies in the world are free from inequalities arising from gender, as few are free from inequalities of race, status and multiple other kinds of division.

A gendered lens: Women, men and the future of livestock

Picture a livestock keeper in the developing world. In all likelihood, you are visualizing a man, perhaps herding cows and goats across a savanna or ploughing a piece of farmland with bullocks. The very term ‘animal husbandry’—which refers to the care, cultivation and breeding of animals—denotes masculine qualities, deriving as it does from late Old English (‘male head of a household’). But of course, it is not only men who keep livestock.

In fact, some two-thirds of the developing world’s hundreds of millions of poor livestock keepers are women, not men. In these countries, women, not men, perform most of the work in farm and herding households that goes into caring for animals. It is these women, not their menfolk, who do most of the day-to-day farm animal management as well as the processing, marketing and selling of the milk and eggs their animals produce. And it is developing-country women, not men, who typically make daily household decisions regarding a family’s chickens and other small stock.

The CGIAR gender platform

A renewed platform on gender aims to give greater voice to women farmers in the developing world Hosted by ILRI, the multi-centre collaborative effort will focus on gender equality and transformative food systems

Women farmers in the developing world face a host of challenges, from balancing domestic and agricultural chores to securing access to land and markets. To help women achieve gender equality in food systems, and to sustainably defeat hunger and enhance nutrition, CGIAR has launched a CGIAR GENDER Platform. The platform aims to create a ‘new normal’-a world in which greater gender equality drives more equitable, sustainable, productive and climate-resilient food systems.
ILRI is proud to serve as host for a new CGIAR-wide platform on gender issues in global agricultural research for development. Known as GENDER (Generating Evidence and New Directions for Equitable Results), the platform aims to help transform the way gender research is done, both within and beyond CGIAR, and to help kick-start a process of genuine change towards greater gender equality and better lives for smallholder farmers everywhere.

Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI, stated, 'GENDER is well positioned to produce far-reaching and enduring impacts because it will aim to give a voice to the millions of women who today are mostly excluded from the extremely urgent efforts to produce enough, and good enough, food under the climate crisis. Only when both women and men are empowered to transform food systems can they successfully nourish families, communities and entire nations, today and in the future.'
Launched in January 2020, GENDER builds on a wealth of research and learning generated by the previous CGIAR Gender Network and the Collaborative Platform for Gender Research (2011–2019). It includes all 14 CGIAR research centres, 12 collaborative CGIAR research programs and 3 other CGIAR system-wide research support platforms and will forge alliances with change-makers in government, academia, national agricultural research extension systems and non-governmental organizations.

go to website

ILRI's gender team

Nicoline de Haan
Senior scientist, Gender
I grew up in Ethiopia with a father who is a livestock specialist. But there was discussion on the farmer behind the cattle, and why was that always a man. This for me was an eye opener and started my curiosity in gender issues. There are opportunities and challenges out there that we need to address to make a more equitable world.
Alessandra Galiè
Senior scientist, Gender
In the year 2000 I was studying Arabic at the University of Damascus and working on a BA thesis on rural development in Syria. I found it striking how the literature, the informal talks, the official speeches talked about men farmers. Studying gendered expectations about ‘behaving woman-like or man-like’ vis-à-vis the daily reality of making ends meet emerged as a life passion.
Annet Mulema
Science officer, Gender and social inclusion
I was born in a family of 11 children (8 girls and 3 boys). Raising this number of girls was not easy for my parents, particularly my father. My parents were pitied by relatives and friends who believed that girls added no value to the family. But my parents valued and believed so much in treating boys and girls the same and with respect.
Renee Marie Bullock
Scientist, Gender and environment
I lived in Zambia from 2003 to 2005, and during this time saw women preparing meals and caring for children, while men cultivated new fields for cassava production. These experiences, in which families have let me into their daily lives and taken me in as another family member, have had a lifelong influence on me and continue to inspire the direction of my career.
Zoë Campbell
Postdoctoral fellow, Gender
My father raised me to be a curious naturalist. He encouraged me to eat krill out of ocean water so I could experience how a whale lives, to wonder why there was a perfect row of trees in the forest, and to think about geologic time and the forces of natural selection. I believe if we understand the messy and complicated systems we exist in, we can make them better.