Comparison of national antimicrobial treatment guidelines, African Union

We reviewed national government agency and public health institutes’ websites and communicated with country or regional focal points to identify existing treatment guidelines from AU Member States. We included guidelines if they contained disease-, syndrome- or pathogen-specific treatment recommendations and if those recommendations included antimicrobial name or class, dosage and therapy duration. The scope of the review was limited to infections and clinical syndromes that often have a bacterial cause. We assessed treatment guidelines for alignment with the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) criteria. We compared treatment recommendations for various common bacterial infections or clinical syndromes described across national guidelines and those described in three World Health Organization guidelines.

AU Member States lack antimicrobial treatment guidelines that meet internationally accepted methods and that draw from local evidence about disease burden and antimicrobial susceptibility.