Health care integration for addressing antimicrobial resistance: Traditional and conventional medical practices in...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) education has been highlighted in both global and national policies as essential for societal efforts to address AMR, with calls for interdisciplinary and intersectoral One Health approaches that involve actors throughout society, including conventional and traditional medical practitioners. While a key aim of AMR education is to reduce the infection burden and antimicrobial use, the potential to integrate these medical practices remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to explore conventional medical practitioners' perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of integrating traditional and conventional medicine to reduce antimicrobial use through infection prevention and alternative treatments as part of AMR education efforts. Using participatory research workshop methods, data from workshops at two Zimbabwean hospitals with health practitioners are presented. The results detail workshop participants' discussions regarding the challenges of misunderstandings and lack of scientific validation and the opportunities for collaboration based on mutual respect, education and training and legitimisation between the two medical practices for health practice integration. The paper contribution includes how community and patient centred AMR educational approaches can be a foundation for integration, highlighting how health care interventions and community empowerment can go hand in hand towards more resilient and culturally relevant AMR educational efforts focusing on prevention.