[Comment] Keeping our feet on the ground: the role of innovation in scaling up diagnosis to counter antimicrobial resistance

At the second UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) held on September 26, 2024, UN member states made important commitments to strengthen global efforts to counter drug-resistant infections, including to “[i]mprove access to diagnosis and care, so at least 80% of countries can test resistance in all bacterial and fungal GLASS [World Health Organization (WHO)’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System] pathogens by 2030”.1 Access to quality-assured microbiology laboratories is indispensable for any successful effort to identify and counter AMR, and yet, scarce in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and the Middle East, particularly in the least-resourced tiers of health-care delivery.