Global Network for AntiMicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention

The Global Network for AntiMicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention (Global-NAMRIP) was an organisation dedicated to research for the prevention of infection and antimicrobial resistance, founded by Professor Timothy Leighton between 2015 and 2024.^[1] Leighton led it, substantially funding it from his inventions from 2019 until 2024. Upon his retirement in 2024, the organisation closed.^[2]

Global-NAMRIP funded over 50 research projects initiating new research collaborations into Anti-Microbial Resistance and Infection Prevention, many of which then grew and became self-supporting. After growing NAMRIP in its first year, Leighton directed significant activities in years 2 onwards to supporting sub-Saharan African: he mentored engineers and entrepreneurs,^[3] arranged visits and worked with African Universities to set up scholarships to the UK,^[4] brought together teams to win funding for African researchers,^[5] supported refugee camps in regions at risk from typhoid and cholera,^[6] and hosted conferences in Africa at no cost to delegates. During the COVID pandemic, the challenges changed, and as the count of deaths grew and the world entered lockdown, Global-NAMRIP's energies were focused into mitigations for the pandemic.^[7][8] Global-NAMRIP taught thousands of members of the public and schoolchildren about AMR, infection prevention, and handwashing, frequently using dialogue to dispel misinformation about, for example, the use of antibiotics. Leighton trained Global-NAMRIP members and led them in a range of engagements with the public^[9] and policymakers^[10] to try to increase an understanding of, and actions to mitigate, the ‘antibiotic apocalypse’. Global-NAMRIP’s official record of activities from 2015-2018 are recorded here ^[11] and its news record is available here. ^[12]

A key mission of Global-NAMRIP that he instituted was to organise dozens of conferences, all without charging delegates and attendees (and even funding travel for delegates from sub-Saharan Africa), in order to allow people who had not worked across disciplines before to meet up and grow new collaborations, stimulating new areas of research. Global-NAMRIP emphasized the need to collaborate with end-users to ensure the right problems were tackled, and addressed with solutions that the end-users could implement for patients and public health. The Global-NAMRIP that he formed was a multidisciplinary research team of hundreds researchers and end users, across four continents, including engineers, chemists, microbiologists, environmental scientists, veterinary and human medics, clinicians who contributed to international and national antibiotic guidelines for specified conditions, experts in food, ethics and law, crucially networked with economists, geographers, health scientists and experts from other social science disciplines to provide a truly joined up approach to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and infection prevention (offsetting the loss of diversity in pharmaceutical industry research teams). As Leighton said at NAMRIP's 2016 conference:

...Unless preventative measures are found (and no-one in the world currently knows what those will be), AMR will (through the colloquial 'rise of superbugs') by 2050 be killing more people than cancer, and cost the world economy more than the current size of the global economy. We will not be able to feed the world unless we wean our food production industry off its dependence on antibiotics; common medical procedures (minor surgery, childbirth) will become significantly more hazardous; and advances in treatments (such as those for childhood leukaemia) will become reversed.

Global-NAMRIP was set up to search for such solutions and mitigations, with particular emphasis to finding alternatives to the oft-cited route of simply funding drug companies to produce more antibiotics. According to the New Scientist,:^[13]

...I looked at all this and realised that even if there was a billion-dollar fund for new antibiotics, it would not sort out the problem; it might just buy us an extra decade. We need a new approach – a step change like the one antibiotics gave us when they first came in.^[13]

...In many parts of the world, climate change and flooding, war, corruption, politics, received wisdom, traditions and religious practices, and the supply of fuel and money, play a far greater role in food, water, waste treatment, healthcare and the transport of microbes from one host to another, than do the outputs of the drug companies. The twin potential catastrophes are global, and so are the causes. The solutions lie with scientists and engineers to develop new technologies and embed new practices in the public and workforce; they lie with farmers, plumbers, office workers, water and sewage workers, medical practitioners, food retailers, innovators in business … indeed most of us. And they lie with those who are responsible for shaping behaviour across the world – not just the pharmaceutical companies.^[14]

Global-NAMRIP created new research teams,^[12] commissioned new research,^[15] engaged with industry^[16] to roll out solutions to society, and engaged with the public and policymakers to conduct outreach, education and dialogue.^[17] The award-winning Public Engagement^[17] and Policymaker Engagement^[18] programmes that Leighton devised and led were mentioned in Parliament by the Under-Secretary of State for Health on 16 November 2017.^[19][20] and Leighton addressed the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on his approach to tackling the threat of AMR.^[21][22]

Global-NAMRIP particularly supported low and middle income Countries with not-for-profit interventions,^[23] for example with initiatives in urban^[24] and rural Ghana (infection being the primary cause of death in rural Ghana).^[25] In Uganda in 2019, Global-NAMRIP members from Uganda, Liberia, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and the UK met to compare, for the first time, the national AMR strategies of their respective countries, to share best practice. The meeting also produced significant impact in education, support for young innovators, and responded to a request from the Ugandan Minister for Health to write for him the 'Kampala Declaration on AMR'.^[26]

Leighton created a large display containing a series of toys (now on permanent display at Winchester Science Museum) to teach the public, and especially children, about Anti-Microbial Resistance. It also travelled around the UK to various science festivals, hospitals and schools. It was, for a time, displayed at London's Science Museum (where Leighton was interviewed - see video^[27]). When he took it to the Cheltenham Science Festival, its impact in children was so great that one woman (after playing the game) realised that it was the reason why all morning the toilets had been filled with children singing 'Happy Birthday' because one of the lessons from the game was to wash your hands for as long as it took to sing that song twice (see video^[28]). When Leighton organised and funded a conference in Kamapala, Uganda, a local children's school composed a dramatic song to convey their understanding of AntiMicrobial Resistance^[29]). Leighton funded the mapping microbes team in NAMRIP to make a video 'in our hands' narrated by the former Children's Laureate (2007-2009), Michael Rosen.^[30] which was distributed free to hospitals for teaching.