International meeting in Ecuador: Food and health in the hands of the community

2019-10-17

Mid-November - in the context of World Food Day and World Antibiotic Awareness Week - ReAct Latin America will arrange an international 4-day meeting in Ecuador with the theme “Health in the Hands of the Community” – focusing on food production and use of antibiotics.

During the four days the participants will discuss inappropriate use of antibiotics in animal husbandry, food production and their release to the environment. How has this contributed to the increase of bacterial resistance – that puts modern medical advances at risk of failure but especially has produced a planetary disease in microbial ecosystems, whose magnitude is not yet visible?

Diverse set of actors joining

A diverse set of actors will join the meeting:

• academics, researchers and food producers
• consumers and educators
• health professionals, students and policy makers
• delegates from the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Education of Ecuador and Bolivia
• delegates from the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute
• officials from local governments and
• delegates of organizations of organic farmers.

There will be participants from Eucador, Colombia and Argentina. All motivated to create change, caring for human, animal and planetary health.

Actions on food, antibiotics and health

The main purpose of the meeting is to initiate a dialogue and to generate consensus on actions on antibiotic resistance derived from antibiotic use in food production. This requires a commitment from all actors to create change.

Therefore, in addition, two parallel workshops are planned:

• “Smart Communities” in health care and antibiotic use.
• “Our School Garden” and the “Educational Knapsack” – strategies for health care and antibiotic use.

The workshops will help create and strengthen alliances as well as work on a set of agreed upon actions to implement strategies and work on community involvement in relation to Community Action Plans on AMR. The end result will hopefully contribute to sustainable processes adressing bacterial resistance within the communities.