06/10/2026
Antimicrobial resistance: countries are strengthening their plans, but financing is not keeping pace. A major new assessment from across Asia and the Pacific highlights both encouraging progress and a serious warning for global health.
New data from 28 Asia-Pacific countries show that governments are developing more sophisticated national action plans to tackle antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. But the World Health Organization and its partners warn that many of those plans still lack the financing needed to translate policy commitments into implementation.
The progress is significant.
Of the 28 countries contributing data, 27 had endorsed at least one multisectoral national AMR action plan. Fourteen were already implementing a second-generation plan, while three had reached their third.
And these newer plans are becoming considerably stronger.
Compared with first-generation strategies, second-generation plans were:
• Twice as likely to be costed, 67% compared with 33%
• Nearly three times as likely to contain monitoring and evaluation frameworks, 93% compared with 33%
• Far more likely to include measurable targets, 71% compared with just 8%
But there is a critical gap between planning and implementation: financing.
Nearly half, 49%, of the 27 countries with AMR plans reported plans that were not costed at all. Only 44% were fully costed and another 7% partially costed.
Only eight countries reported financing their AMR activities entirely through domestic resources. Meanwhile, 15 countries, or 56%, said domestic resources accounted for less than 30% of their overall AMR funding.
This matters because antimicrobial resistance is not a distant or theoretical threat.
In 2019, an estimated 2.6 million deaths in the Asia-Pacific region were associated with AMR, with more than 680,000 deaths directly attributable to it.
In the WHO Western Pacific Region alone, AMR is projected to cause more than 5 million deaths and up to US$148 billion in economic costs between 2020 and 2030.
The findings also reinforce an important point: tackling AMR requires much more than regulating antibiotics.
Preventing infections in the first place is essential. Yet only 16 of the 28 countries reported that more than 75% of their healthcare facilities had basic water, sanitation and hygiene services.
Antibiotic stewardship remains another challenge. Only nine countries reported that more than 70% of antibiotic use came from WHO's "Access" category, the group of effective, generally narrow-spectrum antibiotics recommended for many common infections.
This is why AMR should be understood not only as an infectious-disease problem, but as a health systems, financing and sustainable-development challenge.
A national strategy without financing cannot strengthen laboratories. It cannot expand surveillance. It cannot provide reliable WASH services in health facilities. It cannot adequately train health workers, improve prescribing, prevent infections or build the cross-sector systems required under a One Health approach.
The latest findings therefore point to an important shift in the AMR conversation:
The question is increasingly moving from "Do countries have a plan?" to "Can countries finance and implement it?"
The priorities are becoming clearer: fully cost national AMR strategies, increase sustainable domestic financing, strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity, ensure access to WASH and infection-prevention systems in healthcare facilities, improve antimicrobial stewardship, and continue linking human, animal and environmental health through One Health approaches.
The international community has already established ambitious AMR targets through the 2024 UN General Assembly Political Declaration. The challenge now is converting political commitment into funded, measurable action before 2030.
Because preserving the effectiveness of antimicrobials is about far more than protecting individual medicines. It is about protecting modern healthcare itself, from routine infections and childbirth to surgery, cancer treatment and emergency care.
The plans are becoming stronger. The next test is whether the financing becomes stronger too.
Learn more: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/item/05-10-2026-asia-pacific-countries-sharpen-plans-to-fight-antimicrobial-resistance--but-most-remain-unfunded
