Antimicrobial Resistance in Conflict - Mixed Methods Analysis of the MENA Region

My proposed doctoral thesis interrogates the interface
between antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and conflict. AMR is a
growing challenge across health systems globally. The Chief
Medical Officer has declared that antimicrobial resistance is
the greatest medical challenge of the 21st century. Conflict
is suggested as a driver of resistance patterns due to
biological and social pressures including flight of medical
staff, attacks on healthcare, heavy metal pollution and
population migration. With no robust studies in conflict
regions, there are important gaps in the understanding of
distribution and association with dynamics of conflict such as
geography, weaponry, intensity of violence and the nature of
wounds acquired in conflict.
Existing narrow policy framings of AMR reflect a phenomenon
poorly translated across non-medical policy domains. The
narratives of securitisation and biosurveillance dominate
much of the public and political discourse surrounding AMR.
Political doctrines charting the longstanding stigmatisation of
migrants have been further cemented through the adoption
of discourses that employ medical concerns as central to
appreciating the "threat" posed by displaced peoples fleeing
conflict. Identifying how the stigmatisation of populations has
emerged from security narratives connects this issue to
wider work on communicable diseases, and provides a lens
with which to interrogate the social production of AMR as a
'threat' to the global system. Using the lens of complex
adaptive systems, a novel and illuminative model for AMR in
conflict can be established