Norway congratulates Member States and WHO for the impressive collaboration undertaken in developing national action plans to combat antimicrobial resistance, covering more than 6.5 billion people globally.
We are also pleased to note that the Interagency Coordinating Group has now started its work. We welcome that the environmental factor was clearly recognized by the Interagency Group at its first meeting. We encourage WHO to continue to work closely with the UN Environmental Programme, as well as with other relevant UN organizations.
For Norway, it is essential that the One Health concept includes all relevant environmental aspects. This includes agriculture and contamination from pharmaceutical and other industry. We would have appreciated a stronger focus on substances with antimicrobial activity used in households, industry and food production. We underline the need for such substances to be integrated in WHO's one health approach, and would appreciate information on this in future reports.
Regarding monitoring, we welcome the further development of the Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System. We note, however, that we should avoid duplication of monitoring efforts - but fully utilize existing tools - like the Joint External Evaluation Tool.
Lastly, we thank the Secretariat for the draft road map for the Development & Stewardship Framework to Combat AMR. We note the progress made in relation to the content of the framework and we look forward to engage in discussions on the draft road map content.
However, we want already at this stage to express our strong support for the approach the Secretariat is proposing in the draft road map with regard to the scope of an AMR stewardship framework, which we believe is in line with the previous decision made at the High Level Meeting in New York last year. We support that WHO reports to WHA next year on progress.