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(TIMES) Body to check medicines’ adverse effects launched

Body to check medicines’ adverse effects launched
By Times Reporter

THE Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authority (PRA) has set up a vigilance unit to improve the safe and rational use of medicines to prevent their adverse reactions to patients.

Acting Health Minister, Ronnie Shikapwasha, said at the launch of Pharmaco yesterday that although medicines were useful in treatment, they were potentially harmful, hence the need for a drug safety monitoring system.

He said the use of medicines was not without risks because they had caused great harm to many people and not all adverse effects were known before a medicine was marketed.

Some of the adverse effects of drugs might only be known when the drug had been administered to large numbers of people over a considerable period of time.

Lieutenant General Shikapwasha said effects associated with the use of medicines had considerable social and economic consequences and were increasingly becoming one of the major public health problems that were being recognised by health professionals.

The national drug policy acknowledged the need to have a system to continuously monitor the safety of medicines and was mandated to conduct post-marketing surveillance and monitors adverse drug reactions.

In view of the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, malaria, malnutrition and TB, it was likely that the incidences may be higher than it was known.

In the recent past, there has been an increase in the use of new drugs for the management of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB for which there was insufficient safety data and there was need to put up mechanisms to monitor how safe they were.

The data to be generated within Zambia would have greater relevance and educational value and could assist the PRA to make evidence based decisions.

The minister said the unit would also be involved in the monitoring and documenting drug resistance patterns and treatment failures of both conventional and traditional medicines.

Labels: REGULATION, RONNIE SHIKAPWASHA

posted by MrK @ 7:53 AM