For World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week 2025, we urge you to learn more about antimicrobial resistance and take the simple but powerful steps needed to help prevent its spread.
This year’s theme, Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future, highlights the urgent need to safeguard the effectiveness of these life-saving medicines.
Antimicrobials – such as antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics – are essential for treating infections in humans, animals and the environment. But their effectiveness is under threat.
The overuse and inappropriate use of antimicrobials has led to microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites developing resistance to them.
By evolving to resist the medicines designed to kill them, infections with these microorganisms can result in longer illnesses, more hospitalisations, higher treatment costs, and more deaths from previously treatable infections.
At the interim CDC, we adopt a One Health approach working in collaboration across sectors – human, animal, environmental and food health – to address this complex issue. But everyone has a role to play.
Here’s how you can help reduce the risk of AMR:
- Reduce the risk of infection – practise good hand hygiene and proper wound care.
- Stay up to date with recommended vaccinations.
- Only use antibiotics when you absolutely need them – follow your health professional’s advice.
- Exactly follow prescription instructions – never use leftover antibiotics or those prescribed to someone else.
- Dispose of unused antibiotics safely by returning them to a pharmacy participating in the Return of Unwanted Medicines Program – never keep them for future use or throw them in household rubbish.
By acting now, we can protect these vital medicines and ensure a healthier future for generations to come.
Learn more about antimicrobial resistance and what you can do today:
- Visit amr.gov.au for resources and guidance.
- Read the joint statement on AMR by the Australian Chief Medical Officer, Chief Veterinary Officer, Chief Plant Protection Officer and Chief Environmental Biosecurity Officer.
- Explore the Communicable Diseases Intelligence Journal, which will feature AMR-related articles in November.