Vijiji Tanzania advocates for the effective fight on Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) primary health care as a response that supports essential public health functions. Vijiji Tanzania works in Primary Health care facilities in addressing effective infection prevention and control procedures, adequate water and sanitation, and well-resourced, trained health care workers. Patients’ first contact with the health system should involve comprehensive, continuous, coordinated and patient-centered care. To ensure rational prescribing, this primary care must be integrated with systems that monitor antibiotic use and emergent resistance at the community level. Prescribing can then be based on accurate diagnosis and local resistance patterns when Antimicrobial Use (AMU) has been well measures. The five elements of essential public health functions in primary health care are: health protection, health promotion, disease prevention (service delivery), surveillance and preparedness (intelligence). These functions are key to the effective prevention and management of infection as well as more appropriate use of antibiotics, which underpins AMR control in Tanzania.
Empowering the Communities of Tanzania to fight AMR

The communities of Tanzania have to remind the patients that they are the “owners” of their own health; they are responsible on advocating policies that promote and protect health, and architects of the services that contribute to health. If well engaged and empowered, patients in Tanzania will use antibiotics more appropriately, demand reductions in antibiotic use in food animals, practice infection control measures, such as hygienic food preparation and hand-washing, and promote toilet use and construction of sanitation infrastructure.

Multisectoral actions for AMR in Tanzania

Vijiji Tanzania believes in revising the policies with health ramifications that must be well coordinated in Primary health care services. AMR has remained to be the threat to livestock production as well as human health, and it is driven by inappropriate antimicrobial use in agriculture and food production as well as in human health care. In Tanzania there are more antibiotics are used in livestock production than in human health. A coherent, coordinated response by government agencies at both national and local levels is needed to strengthen the regulation of medicines and prevent and manage infection across human, animal and environmental sectors.