Superheroes Against Superbugs (SaS), in collaboration with South Asian Sanitation and Labour Network (SASLN) and Partners in Change (PiC) and with support from Centrient Pharmaceuticals, has launched a new, on-ground initiative that brings Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) into everyday conversations around health, work, and living conditions. Titled Champions for Health or Sehat ke Rakhwale in Hindi, this campaign is rooted in the realities of sanitation worker communities, where health risks are shaped as much by environment and access as by biology.
For sanitation workers and their families, AMR is not an abstract or distant issue, but surely an invisible one (learn more here). It is closely tied to everyday realities, frequent exposure to unsafe environments, limited access to healthcare, gaps in health literacy, and repeated infections that often lead to antibiotic use. Addressing AMR in this context means going beyond awareness alone, and engaging with water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), infection prevention, and responsible medicine use together.
Through this campaign, we aim to integrate AMR awareness into existing community systems and outreach efforts. This will include organising health and awareness camps that combine basic health services with conversations on infection prevention and medicine use, facilitating trainings and orientation sessions for community teams, and conducting door-to-door outreach to engage families directly. The initiative will also focus on strengthening engagement with municipal systems, unions, and local healthcare providers, while developing visual, context-specific communication tools tailored for sanitation worker communities. Rather than creating parallel structures, the work builds on ongoing efforts and platforms led by SASLN.
The campaign will be implemented across the states of Uttarakhand, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam, and Chandigarh, with a community-led approach where SASLN state coordinators anchor implementation based on local contexts, needs and realities. At SaS, our role focuses on bridging science and communication, ensuring that AMR is understood not just as a technical issue, but as something that connects meaningfully with people’s lived experiences.
Over the coming months, we will be sharing insights, reflections, and learnings as the work evolves. Addressing AMR in a meaningful way will require more than information – it will require grounded, collective action that connects science, systems, and everyday life.
If you’d like to be involved as an on-ground or technical supporter or would like to learn more about this campaign, please write to us at sasindia2018@gmail.com.