Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global health threat, with the greatest burden falling on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) also challenged with limited surveillance capacity. The UK Government's Fleming Fund was established in 2015 to strengthen AMR surveillance across Africa and Asia through a One Health approach. This paper draws on program experience, country implementation evidence, and published literature to describe how the Fleming Fund operationalized AMR surveillance, assess its contribution to the quantity and quality of surveillance data, identify key implementation challenges, and consider implications for future global surveillance strategies. The Fleming Fund combined investments in laboratory infrastructure, workforce development, quality assurance, data systems, governance, and data use. Across supported countries, these investments enabled substantial growth in routine bacteriology and antimicrobial susceptibility testing, strengthened reference and surveillance laboratory capacity, increased participation in external quality assessment, and expanded reporting to the World Health Organization's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System. The program also supported complementary surveillance approaches, including antimicrobial use and consumption data and, in some settings, burden-of-disease and genomic surveillance. Progress, however, has been uneven and remains vulnerable to fragile infrastructure, procurement and supply chain bottlenecks, workforce turnover, fragmented data systems, weak clinical–laboratory interfaces, limited representativeness, and uncertain long-term financing. The Fleming Fund experience shows that strengthening AMR surveillance in LMICs is feasible, but requires sustained, system-wide investment. Future strategies should prioritize integration with clinical care, stronger digital and analytical capacity, broader diagnostic access, and domestic financing to ensure that high-quality AMR data are generated, shared, and translated into action.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains a persistent world-wide health concern. Poultry production in Nigeria has become a large-scale venture and is largely characterised by intensive management system. This intensive management system disposes to more antibiotic use and thus a greater risk of AMR. Previous reviews on AMR data in Nigeria have not considered the accuracy of methods and interpretation criteria. Therefore, in contribution to the “One Health” AMR Surveillance system, which is one of the five focus areas described by the Nigeria action plan on AMR control, this comprehensive review collates, curate, and analyse AMR published data in the Nigeria poultry sector and assessed the AST methods and interpretation criteria. A search of AMR reports from poultry in Nigeria prior to 2020 after screening for relevance yielded 69 studies from 2005-2020 with 91 AMR reports (some studies reported more than one organism). From these studies we reviewed the organisms reported, antibiotics tested, resistance to tested antibiotics, distribution of reports within the country’s geopolitical zones, multidrug resistance pattern, the inclusion or absence of control strains in antimicrobial testing, the antimicrobial testing method and interpretative criteria used.There was no AMR study in poultry earlier than 2005 in Nigeria, highest number of study was in 2019 (n=12). South-Western region has the highest number (n = 27) of study and the North-Western region has the lowest (n = 5). Organisms mostly reported were Salmonella, 31%, Escherichia coli, 26% and Staphylococcus aureus, 15%). Other organisms (≤5%) were Campylobacter, Klebsiella, Bacillus, Listeria, Enterobacter, Proteus, Norcardia, Streptococcus, Alkaligenes, Shigella, Micrococcus, Enterococcus, Ochrobacturm, and Yersinia. The antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) method mostly used was disc diffusion (80%), also majority (95.7%) of the studies used the CLSI standards for interpretation and 79.7% of the studies did not mention the use of control strains for AST. The 69 studies reviewed tested 69 antimicrobials belonging to 17 classes of Antibiotics; the most tested classes of antimicrobial were β-lactams (33%), quinolones (21%) and aminoglycosides (15.4%). All of the organisms showed varying multi-drug resistance; greater proportion (50-100%) has MAR Index greater than 0.2. The review of the various studies showed very high multi-drug resistance among the various organisms of poultry origin and also a gap in AST carried out in Nigeria. We therefore recommend that AST research methods must be of global standard and additional efforts should be made towards education of the general public on best practices of antibiotics usage and the dangers of AMR.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Salmonella spp are bacteria commonly found in the intestinal flora of humans, other mammals, animals, and birds. These two pathogens are the most important food-borne pathogens of public health importance in poultry globally. This study was designed to determine the antibiotics resistance patterns, identify resistance genes and ESBL production in E. coli and Salmonella species isolated from commercial poultry farms across Nigeria. A subset of 101 isolates (24 putative Salmonella and 77 putative E. coli) from a collection obtained at poultry farms in Nigeria , were analysed in this study. Of the 24 confirmed Salmonella, 7 isolates were fully susceptible and had no resistance genes, these were the two Dugbe’s and five Isangi serovars. The antimicrobial class with the highest prevalence of resistance was the quinolones with 71% of isolates having resistance to Ciprofloxacin and Nalidixic Acid. None of the Salmonella isolates had resistance to Amikacin, Azithromycin, Cephalosporins (2nd – 4th generation), Colistin, Meropenem, Tigecycline and Trimethoprim. There was a much higher resistance frequency in the E. coli compared to the Salmonella. Over 80% of isolates have resistance to Fluoroquinolones (Ciprofloxacin and Nalidixic Acid) with a similar percentage having resistance to tetracyclines. No isolates had an AmpC phenotype. The MIC distribution for the E. coli is also far greater than the Salmonella with a higher prevalence of MDR strains. Notable genes identified in isolates include: sul2, aph(3'')-Ib, aph(6)-Id, blaCTX-M, blaOXA, blaCTX-M-15, CTX-M-15, CTX-M-27, CTX-M-65 and the most prevalent been CTX-M-55. The study revealed that Salmonella and E. coli from in Oyo State are becoming more resistant to antibiotics.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is an emerging zoonotic pathogen in many parts of the world. Although pigs are important reservoirs of HEV, there is a paucity of multi-state data on HEV among domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) and the associated slaughter‑slab risk factors in Nigeria. This study, therefore, determined the seroprevalence of HEV antibodies among slaughtered pigs and evaluated zoonosis awareness and risk perception among pig workers across six selected Nigerian states to assess animal welfare and slaughter hygiene conditions at the sampled facilities. A multi-state cross-sectional study was conducted across six of the 36 states in Nigeria (Benue, Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara, Oyo and Plateau). Porcine plasma (n = 1,723) collected from 25 slaughter slabs was screened for total HEV antibodies using IDVET indirect multispecies ELISA. Socio-demographic data, including slaughter hygiene and animal welfare, were obtained through on-site observations, and 84 pig butchers/farmers were surveyed on awareness and risk perception of pig-borne zoonoses. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify predictors of HEV seropositivity. Overall, HEV seroprevalence was 47.1% (n = 811), ranging from 26.0% in Kwara to 67.6% in Kaduna. In multivariable analysis, state, age, and gender were independently associated with HEV seropositivity: pigs in Kaduna (aOR = 2.10, 95% CI: 1.46–3.02; p < 0.001) and Plateau (aOR = 1.58, 95% CI: 1.10–2.27; p = 0.014) had higher odds of having anti-HEV antibodies. Older pigs aged 6–10 months (aOR = 3.40, 95% CI: 2.49–4.63) and > 10 months (aOR = 3.23, 95% CI: 2.35 − 4.44) had over three-fold higher likelihood of HEV seropositivity. Females had over three times the odds of having anti-HEV IgG compared with males (aOR = 3.23, 95% CI: 2.59–4.04). Slaughter slabs were rated average (20%, n = 5/25) or below average (36%, n = 9/25) for hygiene, with frequent faecal, blood and dirt contamination and limited use of personal protective equipment. Less than half (44%, n = 11/25) of the slaughtering facilities practised proper stunning and bleeding. Knowledge of pig-borne zoonoses among butchers/farmers was poor: 47.6% knew pigs could transmit diseases to humans, and specific disease recognition was limited. The high rates of HEV in slaughtered pigs in this study, combined with suboptimal slaughter hygiene and limited zoonoses awareness among pig workers, underscore a substantial potential for zoonotic transmission in Nigeria. Strengthening on-farm biosecurity, slaughter‑slab hygiene, and occupational health education within a One Health framework is essential to reducing HEV and other pig-associated zoonotic risks.