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Peer Reviews (7)

Published on in Vol 2 (2024)

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/58903, first published .
Peer Review of “Establishing Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in the Water and Environment Sector in a Resource-Limited Setting: Methodical Qualitative and Quantitative Description of Uganda’s Experience From 2021 to 2023”

Peer Review of “Establishing Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in the Water and Environment Sector in a Resource-Limited Setting: Methodical Qualitative and Quantitative Description of Uganda’s Experience From 2021 to 2023”

Peer Review of “Establishing Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in the Water and Environment Sector in a Resource-Limited Setting: Methodical Qualitative and Quantitative Description of Uganda’s Experience From 2021 to 2023”

Authors of this article:

Gerald Mboowa1 Author Orcid Image
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    Peer-Review Report


    This is a peer-review report submitted for the paper “Establishing Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in the Water and Environment Sector in a Resource-Limited Setting: Methodical Qualitative and Quantitative Description of Uganda’s Experience From 2021 to 2023”


    General Comments

    This paper [1] is timely and presents data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance in the water and environment sector in a resource-limited setting.

    Specific Comments

    Methodology

    “A stepwise approach was employed. Governance structures were streamlined and sector-specific AMR surveillance guiding documents developed” -> “were developed”

    “Conslusion” -> Check the spelling.

    “CONFLICTS OF INTEREST” -> “CONFLICT OF INTEREST”

    Antimicrobial Resistance Governance Establishment and Enhancement

    “To streamline the AMR governance in the water and environment sector, a sector-specific AMR technical working group (TWG) was instituted with identified a focal person to coordinate the surveillance activities in the sector.” (Rewrite this.)

    Major Comments

    Enhancement of the Microbiology Capacity of the National Water Quality Reference Laboratory

    I would like to see a description of the testing platforms in this lab and plans for genomic surveillance of AMR since it reveals more about the complexity, evolution, and transmission of these pathogens as seen here.

    Minor Comments

    AMR Data Generation

    “The developed sector-specific AMR surveillance documents were pretested.” (How was this done?”)

    Discussion

    Figure 1: It would be important to share this data via a public dashboard like here [2]. “Liguori et al. have described the methods as fairly standardized, and an avenue for further analysis of the recovered isolates including sensitivity testing, sequence-based typing and whole genome sequencing, which aid in detecting and identifying antibiotic-resistant genes and genetic elements [3].” And virulence factors [4].

    Authors should also discuss making a sentence on the contribution of environmental wastewater sequencing.

    As a way forward, I wish to request the authors set up a public dashboard to share this important AMR surveillance data to stakeholders beyond the TWG as seen here [5].

    Conflicts of Interest

    None declared.

    Editorial notice: A peer reviewer conflict of interest was identified prior to publication: They work at the same institution or organization as an author. They have published with an author during the past 5 years.

    1. Katumba G, Mwanja H, Mayito J, Mbolanyi B, Isaasi F, Kibombo D, et al. Establishing antimicrobial resistance surveillance in the water and environment sector in a resource-limited setting: methodical qualitative and quantitative description of Uganda's experience from 2021 to 2023. JMIRx Bio. 2024. [CrossRef]
    2. MAAP country reports. African Society for Laboratory Medicine. URL: https://aslm.org/what-we-do/maap/maap-country-reports [accessed 2024-04-22]
    3. Liguori K, Keenum I, Davis BC, Calarco J, Milligan E, Harwood VJ, et al. Antimicrobial resistance monitoring of water environments: a framework for standardized methods and quality control. Environ Sci Technol. Jul 05, 2022;56(13):9149-9160. [CrossRef] [Medline]
    4. Kiyaga S, Kyany'a C, Muraya AW, Smith HJ, Mills EG, Kibet C, et al. Genetic diversity, distribution, and genomic characterization of antibiotic resistance and virulence of clinical strains in Kenya. Front Microbiol. 2022;13:835403. [CrossRef] [Medline]
    5. National situation of antimicrobial resistance and consumption analysis from 2016-2018. African Society for Laboratory Medicine. URL: https://aslm.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AMR_REPORT_UGANDA.pdf?x89467 [accessed 2024-04-22]

    ‎
    AMR: antimicrobial resistance
    TWG: technical working group

    Edited by T Leung; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 27.03.24; accepted 27.03.24; published 07.05.24.

    Copyright

    ©Gerald Mboowa. Originally published in JMIRx Bio (https://bio.jmirx.org), 07.05.2024.

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIRx Bio, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://bio.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.