Pharmacovigilance (PV) should be a culture in countries of the region and should be backed up by policies and regulations that support PV programmes according to recommendations by the recently-concluded 6th National Pharmacovigilance Conference.
Dr. Amin Hussein Al Amiri, Assistant Undersecretary for Public Policy and Licensing, Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP), said the conference developed 10 recommendations, UAE News Agency (WAM) reported.
He stressed the importance of building trust in the critical role of testing medicines following registration and testing random samples from the field, of enhancing pharmacovigilance education programs among healthcare professionals throughout the region and of including pharmacovigilance education in the academic curricula of medical and scientific schools and developing it as a basic tenet of education.
The participants called for reinforcing the importance of PV programmes in maintaining the health and safety of the community and protecting it from adverse drug reactions and warnings, and emphasised that the reporting of adverse drug reactions should be an established culture among healthcare professionals and should be done without embarrassment.
''Public awareness of expected adverse drug reactions must be raised through enhanced health education and reported adverse drug reactions must be categorised and separated according to originator medicine, generic, and biological views of the differences in their chemical compositions,'' according to the recommendations.
The participants also called for expanding the regulatory role of PV and supporting it with policies that enhance its effectiveness globally and create a focus on the educational role of pharmacovigilance officers among the various healthcare establishments in the region, according to WAM .

Source: BNA