Latin American "Minga" for World AMR Awareness Week

2025-11-25

During WorldAMR Awareness Week, celebrated every year from November 18 to 24, communities across Latin America organized a series of colorful events. They met in plazas, schools, kitchens, government ministries, universities, on the streets, and in their territories to imagine solutions, create art, dialogue, and care for one another.

The 5th Meeting of Empowered Communities of Latin America and the Caribbean in Tucumán, Argentina

In this year’s campaign, we set out to strengthen local, national, and regional actions to care for antibiotics as a common good. Using a Planetary Health approach, we summoned multiple sectors and territories to this “minga” (communal gathering) in a regional embrace that united organizations from El Salvador, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, and Ecuador.

The actions were as diverse as the territories themselves. They unfolded in the form of art, stories, songs, festivals, vegetable gardens, dialogues, seminars, meetings, cooking workshops, rap competitions, meme contests, training spaces on antibiotic waste management, meetings with educators, and even legislative bills. Distinct voices and actions, yet deeply connected, intertwined communities, sharing knowledge and proposals that inspire and invite us to rethink our relationship with antibiotics, health, the microbial world, food, water, soil, and life itself.

Caring for antibiotics, caring for life

Caring for antibiotics is an ethical gesture, an act of love toward present and future generations. That is why we promoted a clear and hopeful slogan: access for those who need it, excess for no one, because caring for antibiotics is caring for life.

With that spirit, we highlight the workshops and artistic activities carried out with children and families in vulnerable situations in Colombia and Ecuador. These helped transmit this message through a powerful symbol: the “Piggy Banks of Life” (Alcancías de Vida). Full of colours, these piggy banks taught that water, ecosystems, and antibiotics are shared treasures—riches we must care for with tenderness and responsibility to protect life today and the life of those to come.

Meanwhile, on November 20, social organizations in Bolivia presented a bill to the Ministry of Health to strengthen food safety and AMR surveillance. Key points of this proposed law included the requirement to regulate the use of antibiotics in intensive and clandestine breeding of animals intended for human consumption, and coordination between ministries.

The communities of Argentina did not stay behind. The Community Health Program of the Ministry of Health of Buenos Aires, together with the Italian Hospital and ReAct Latin America, gathered 120 rural health promoters to discuss AMR, the microbiome, and pharmaceutical waste. From that meeting emerged a concrete commitment: to launch a campaign in 2026, through the Ministry’s training schools, to collect expired medicines and prevent the spread of resistance in the environment, in addition to promoting healthy eating as key to infection prevention. This year, communities demonstrated they are ready to take on this commitment.

Planetary Health: A Multisectoral Response to AMR

The campaign also addressed AMR as a planetary health challenge, understanding that human, animal, and environmental health are deeply interconnected and interdependent. From this integral perspective, communities, educational institutions, social organizations, universities, local governments, and youth mobilized to weave collaborations, strengthen participatory networks, and unite knowledge.

In this regard, we highlight the 5th Meeting of Empowered Communities of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Tucumán, Argentina, on November 18 and 19. Hundreds of educators, together with government institutions and social organizations from Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, the United States, Peru, and Uruguay, gathered to share educational and community strategies to address AMR from a Planetary Health approach. The meeting included workshops, artistic activities, dialogues, and experiences. As a result, a strategic coalition emerged, committed to strengthening and expanding the Educational Saddlebag (Alforja Educativa) project throughout the region.

This planetary health approach also drove transdisciplinary initiatives, highlighting the commitment of universities in El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. In particular, the Higher University of San Andrés (UMSA) in Bolivia presented a project integrating medicine, veterinary science, communication, and civil society to address AMR in a comprehensive and participatory manner.

And in Argentina, the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health of the National University of Rosario (UNR) reaffirmed its link with communities through a diverse territorial agenda: from its presence at the Argentine Congress of Agroecology and the closing of the Food and Health Course, to healthy cooking workshops and the inauguration of the Socio-Environmental Health Garden Greenhouse—a symbol of the joint work between the UNR and communities to cultivate knowledge, resilience, and collective health.

Youth in Action

Youth were also protagonists of this campaign. They embodied the creativity and innovation that this planetary challenge needs.

This happened in El Alto, Bolivia, where young people took over the plaza and the mayor’s office to celebrate the First Interuniversity Festival on AMR. Students from the Public University of El Alto and the Higher University of San Andrés, as well as a collective of young rappers, gave life to a meme contest and a vibrant rap battle: improvised verses spoke of prevention, microbiomes, collective care, and One Health, bringing the topic closer to the community with rhythm, creativity, humour, and heart.

Thus, it was demonstrated that the organized community is the heart of health systems. Without their participation, it is not possible to contain AMR. From there we start and to there we return: to the knowledge of the territories, to their essential needs, and to their infinite capacity to defend life in all its forms and colours—like seeds growing from the bottom up, but also like bacteria cooperating with each other to care for life and diversity.