SAIDI Document (South American Infectious Disease Initiative / Iniciativa Contra las Enfermedades Infecciosas en América del Sur)

The purpose of this publication is to show the results of the SAIDI Initiative in the countries where interventions have taken place. To acomplish this, a country profile was produced showing an overview of the situation regarding resistance to antimicrobials, both before and after the Initiative, as well as information on the key actors involved. This profile is aimed at technical staff and decision-makers who, from different perspectives, deal with the use of antibiotics and resistance to them.

 Full text (in Spanish, 66 pages)
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About SAIDI

General Objective: Providing assistance to participating countries in identifying the factors that contribute to the rise in antimicrobial resistance and capacity-building on how to develop interventions to contain the emergence and spread of resistance to antibiotics.

Central Focus: The appropriate use of antibiotics of guaranteed quality.

Strategic Objectives (SOs)

• SO1: Increase the amount of available evidence regarding the management and use of antimicrobials in humans, in order to improve decision-making processes.
  
• SO2: Collaborate with the countries in developing effective strategies to counteract resistance with emphasis on the use of antimicrobials of guaranteed quality.
  
• SO3: Empower information exchange and dissemination on the lessons learned by the three countries involved (Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru) in the process of preparing their country profiles. 

Why this initiative?

Since the 1980s, the production rate for antibiotics has been surpassed by the speed of the appearance of antimicrobial resistance, which threatens the availability of effective tools to confront emerging and reemerging infectious diseases—some with patterns of multiple resistance, implying a serious global public health risk. 

Approaching this phenomenon from an integrated perspective, the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/LAC/SD)—with the collaboration of various international partners, created in 2004 the South American Infectious Disease Initiative (SAIDI), which has enabled the implemention of a multisectoral strategy in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru. PAHO's role, as one of the international partners, is to integrate this initiative.