The Safe Medicine Squad: AMR Awareness Comic Strip for School Students | PhVFit Toolkit
Understanding Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) through storytelling
How do we explain antimicrobial resistance to school students in a way they can understand, remember and discuss? The PhVFit AMR Awareness Comic Strip uses a colourful, child-friendly story featuring Arjun and Lolita to introduce students to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), antibiotic resistance and the importance of responsible antibiotic use.
Through simple conversations, relatable examples and engaging illustrations, the comic explains how bacteria can change over time and develop resistance to antibiotics, making these medicines less effective. A simple analogy of two people trying to outsmart each other helps children understand how bacteria adapt and survive when exposed to antibiotics.
The comic also explores why taking antibiotics without a doctor’s advice, stopping treatment prematurely or using leftover antibiotics can contribute to the development and spread of antibiotic resistance. It highlights an important public health message: AMR is not just an individual’s problem. Resistant bacteria can spread through families, schools and communities, making common infections harder to treat.
What will students learn?
- What is antimicrobial resistance? Understand what AMR means and why antibiotics may stop working against resistant bacteria.
- How does antibiotic resistance develop? Learn how bacteria can mutate and adapt to survive exposure to antibiotics.
- Why should antibiotics be taken only on medical advice? Understand the risks of unnecessary and inappropriate antibiotic use.
- Why follow the prescribed treatment? Learn to take antibiotics exactly as prescribed and for the duration advised by the healthcare professional.
- Why should antibiotics never be shared? Understand why leftover medicines should not be reused or shared with others.
- Antibiotics are not for every infection: Learn that antibiotics work against bacteria, not viruses that cause illnesses such as the common cold and flu.
- AMR is a community concern: Discover how resistant bacteria can spread beyond one individual and affect public health.
How can teachers use this AMR comic strip?
This one-page educational comic can be used as a classroom reading activity, a starting point for group discussions, a school health awareness session or an interactive activity during World AMR Awareness Week.
Teachers can invite students to read the conversations between Arjun and Lolita, discuss the examples, identify unsafe antibiotic-use practices and reflect on how their choices can help protect the wider community.
Its simple one-page format makes it easy to print, share and use as a quick classroom learning resource.
About the PhVFit School Medication Safety Toolkit
The PhVFit School Medication Safety Toolkit aims to build medication awareness and responsible medicine-use habits among children and young people through accessible, engaging and age-appropriate learning resources.
Be Antibiotic Smart. Use antibiotics responsibly. Help protect their effectiveness for everyone.
Resource: PhVFit | Patient Safety and Medication Awareness