Conclusions
febrile, acute febrile illness, febrile illness
BACTERIAL INFECTION, FEBRILE ILLNESS
This study found that a diagnostic intervention for management of febrile outpatients did not achieve the desired impact on antibiotic prescribing at 3 diverse and representative health facility sites in Uganda.We report the main findings of the AMR Diagnostics Use Accelerator trial conducted in Uganda to evaluate the impact of a package of interventions on antibiotic prescribing and clinical outcomes for child and adult outpatients with acute febrile illness.The global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to increase with a growing global population and greater use of and reliance on antimicrobials [In sentinel surveillance at clinical sites in Uganda, the use of antimicrobials is driven by availability, access, and affordability, and not necessarily by efficacy and suitability [However, stewardship is complicated by the fact that most antibiotic use is empiric, without confirmation of whether or not a febrile illness is caused by bacterial infection, which leads to the prescription of “just-in-case” antibiotics [We investigated whether adopting a panel of commercially available POCTs intended to help clinicians distinguish between bacterial and other infectious causes of acute febrile illness, combined with clinical diagnostic algorithms and behavior change activities, could safely reduce antibiotic prescribing compared with current standard-of-care for febrile patients presenting to outpatient clinics in Uganda.