Female community health volunteers are the frontline pillars of community-based health programs in Nepal. They are an integral part of many community-based health programs, and their roles are instrumental in linking families and communities to community health workers and periphery-level health facilities. We have been working closely with the health volunteers of the Lalitpur Metropolitan City for other studies ongoing in OUCRU Nepal. During our interaction with the health volunteers, we found that they are unaware of the problem of antimicrobial resistance and the means of tackling this issue.

With the objective to make the community health volunteers aware of antimicrobial resistance, tea-talk engagement sessions were conducted with them. Since 2022, we have conducted eight tea-talk sessions with 107 community health volunteers from eight different wards of Lalitpur Metropolitan City. These tea-talk sessions were facilitated by experts from OUCRU Nepal with experience working on antimicrobial resistance. Presentations on AMR along with group discussion and video screening of “Bichara antibiotic” along with the AMR movie were showcased. Before conducting the tea-talk sessions, we had informal conversations with the health volunteers regarding the best medium to raise awareness on AMR, of which, the majority of the volunteers voted for songs as the best medium. After each tea-talk session, the community health volunteers were asked to compose a song on AMR and we received a total of six songs.

On World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) 2022, we organised a song competition between community health volunteers. The two best songs have been now in the process of audio recording and video making. These songs will be used for future drug-resistant infection engagement events in the community.