Trinity Challenge 2024 awards £2.7 million to help farmers and health workers combat antimicrobial resistance

The Trinity Challenge 2024 has announced four winning teams using new technologies to tackle the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The projects in India, South Africa, and Vietnam – receiving in total £2.7 million – are addressing significant data gaps in communities and countries disproportionately affected by antibiotic-resistant infections.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chair of the Trinity Challenge and UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance, said:

The vision and hard work of our winners has been inspiring. They each show that everyone can make a difference and be part of the solution to the antibiotic emergency; no one has the whole answer but we can each still act. For example, with their plans to create a new platform for farmers to access diagnosis and treatment advice for their animals, our grand prize winner is focussing on the food chain, and yet creating a powerful solution that can generate data to fill our knowledge gaps and inform decision-makers.

Grand Prize Winner: Farm2Vet: Combatting AMR on the Farm Frontier. 

Farm2Vet, based in Vietnam, aims to create a new platform that will encourage responsible antibiotic use in food-producing animals by offering farmers instant, low-cost access to trusted veterinary services for disease diagnosis and treatment advice. As well as directly supporting farmers, the data gathered by the platform will inform policymakers by identifying hotspots of antibiotic resistance and allowing action to be taken to prevent outbreaks. Farm2Vet wins £1 million.

Joint second prize:  AMRSense: Empowering Communities with a Proactive One Health Ecosystem and OASIS: OneHealth Antimicrobial Stewardship for Informal Health Systems. 

Both projects are based in India and aim to empower community health workers and informal caregivers with new technologies to gather data on AMR at the community level. Each organisation receives £600,00.

Third prize: AMRoots: Grassroots AMR in small scale farming communities.

Based in South Africa, AMRoots will generate new data on the development and transmission of antibiotic resistance in livestock farming communities that are critical for the future food security of sub-Saharan Africa. The organisation receives £500,000.

The winners of the Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance will also receive ongoing post-award innovation and scaling support as they implement their solutions.

Dr Helen Nguyen, Team Lead of Farm2Vet, said:

At first we thought, ‘What if anyone at any time can have access to a vet?’ It sounded like science fiction but we realised we do have the technology, veterinary expertise and community engagement to do it. We hope that farmers will benefit, but that we can also create sustainability in the agricultural supply chain, and also protect workers and families from infectious disease. We are not isolated from each other – when we stop microbes becoming resistant, we can protect ourselves and the environment at the same time.

Professor Marc Mendelson, Director of the Trinity Challenge, said:

In order to protect the power of antibiotics now and in the future, we decided to focus this Challenge on a major gap in data at the community level, across One Health, and in low- and middle- income countries where the burden of bacterial infections is highest. As a One Health Challenge, I am delighted that our winners have solutions to mitigate antibiotic resistance and improve our understanding in both human and animal health. I am excited to work with these teams as their innovations come to life.