By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, August 27, 2026 - The next time a patient walks into a Kenyan hospital with an infection, the difference between recovering quickly and spending days in hospital could increasingly depend on something many patients rarely think about: whether the medicine prescribed still works.
That is the growing challenge posed by antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, as drug-resistant bacteria and other microorganisms become harder to treat.
Against this backdrop, the International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions (ICARS) is formally establishing its regional presence in Africa, with ICARS Africa based in Nairobi and hosted by Amref Health Africa. The regional platform has been launched officially as ICARS seeks to strengthen practical, locally led responses to AMR across the continent.
The question, however, is what the new regional presence will actually change for people outside conference rooms and policy meetings.
For an ordinary patient, AMR can mean that an infection that would once have responded to a commonly available antibiotic may require a different medicine, additional tests, longer treatment, or a hospital admission.
The World Health Organization estimates that one in five laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections in the African Region was resistant to antibiotics in 2023. Globally, resistance is also increasing across many important bacteria-antibiotic combinations.
Kenya is already building systems to detect the problem.
According to WHO, Kenya has expanded its AMR surveillance network to 32 sites across 27 counties and multiple One Health sectors, covering human, animal and environmental health. More than 100,000 AMR surveillance records were collected between 2021 and 2025, with 9,039 records submitted to the WHO's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System in 2025.
The challenge now is turning that information into action.
That is where ICARS Africa hopes to make a difference.
Much of the discussion at the Nairobi launch has centred on a simple problem: Africa already has considerable evidence on what can work against AMR, but successful projects do not automatically become national programmes.
One panelist noted that ICARS Africa could help countries build a stronger investment case by showing governments not only that an intervention works, but how much it costs and how it can be financed.
The aim is to move successful interventions from individual projects into government budgets and national health systems.
“How do we cost them? How do we finance them in such a way that we reduce donor dependency but push countries towards ownership?”
That distinction is important.
If a hospital intervention reduces unnecessary antibiotic use but costs too much to implement across hundreds of facilities, policymakers need to know that before committing public money.
Equally, if a relatively inexpensive intervention can reduce infections, improve prescribing and save hospitals money, governments need evidence strong enough to justify taking it to scale.
One of the panelists put the challenge in practical terms: governments need answers to questions such as how much implementation costs and whether an intervention is feasible in their own health systems.
For patients, that could eventually translate into more accurate diagnosis, better prescribing and fewer infections acquired inside healthcare facilities.
Kenya has already made progress in this area. WHO says more than 5,000 health workers have been trained on appropriate antibiotic use, while infection-prevention and control structures have been established across 23 counties.
One of the most important changes could happen before a doctor prescribes an antibiotic: better testing.
When clinicians cannot quickly determine what is causing an infection or whether a bacterium is resistant to a particular medicine, treatment may have to begin before the necessary information is available.
Better laboratory capacity and antimicrobial susceptibility testing can help clinicians select medicines based on evidence rather than assumption.
Nairobi is already emerging as an important regional laboratory hub. ICARS says a Centre of Excellence for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing has been established in Nairobi through a collaboration involving the International Livestock Research Institute, ICARS and the EUCAST Development Laboratory. The centre has tested around 4,000 bacterial isolates from Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin, Uganda and Burkina Faso.
ICARS Africa could build on this type of regional capacity by helping countries share expertise, data and approaches rather than each country attempting to solve the same problem independently.
That was another major theme from the Nairobi panel.
If an intervention works in Kenya, the question should be whether it can be adapted for Uganda, Tanzania, Tunisia or another African setting, rather than remaining a successful project in only one country.
For people buying medicines from pharmacies, the AMR conversation is ultimately about using the right medicine for the right infection.
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Antibiotics treat bacterial infections; they do not treat viral illnesses such as most common colds and influenza.
Yet unnecessary or inappropriate antibiotic use contributes to resistance.
ICARS Africa's role will therefore also involve strengthening antimicrobial stewardship — helping health systems, healthcare workers and other stakeholders use antibiotics responsibly while ensuring that patients who genuinely need them can access effective treatment.
The goal is not simply to make antibiotics harder to obtain.
It is to make their use more targeted and evidence-based.
AMR does not stop at the hospital gate.
The WHO describes antimicrobial resistance as a One Health problem, because antimicrobial use and resistance are connected across human health, animal health, agriculture and the environment.
That means what happens on a farm can eventually affect human health.
Antimicrobials may be used in livestock and poultry to treat infections, but inappropriate or excessive use can contribute to resistance. Resistant organisms can move between animals, people, food and the environment.
This is why ICARS' African work includes projects extending beyond human healthcare.
The panel discussion highlighted examples such as the Maziwa Plus intervention involving livestock, illustrating how an AMR solution can be designed to speak simultaneously to farmers, agricultural policymakers and technical experts.
That approach is central to the One Health model: instead of treating human health, animal health and the environment as separate problems, interventions look at how the three interact.
Perhaps the most important message from the Nairobi launch is that Africa does not need another collection of imported solutions that work only on paper.
It needs interventions tested in African conditions, with African data showing what works, what it costs and how it can be sustained.
One panelist argued that country-level projects are already producing substantial amounts of evidence, but the next step is turning that evidence into answers for ministers and policymakers.
“We need to be able to answer questions on implementation and also answer questions on feasibility.”
That could ultimately be ICARS Africa's most important contribution.
The organisation says its regional presence is intended to improve coordination, partnerships, capacity strengthening and knowledge sharing among African countries facing shared AMR challenges.
For ordinary Kenyans, success will not be measured by the number of projects launched or reports produced.
It will be measured much closer to home: whether a patient gets the right antibiotic instead of the wrong one, whether a laboratory can identify resistance before treatment fails, whether hospitals prevent infections instead of simply treating them, whether pharmacies promote responsible medicine use and whether farmers can protect their animals without contributing unnecessarily to resistance.
The Nairobi launch therefore marks the beginning of a much bigger test.
ICARS Africa has access to a growing body of evidence, existing African projects and regional partners. The challenge now is turning that evidence into affordable, scalable and locally owned solutions.
Because when antibiotics stop working, the problem is no longer just a medical one.
It becomes a problem for the patient, the hospital, the pharmacist, the farmer, and ultimately the entire health system.