Advances in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety

Abstract

Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission's Partners for Promoting Public Health

Kalaiselvan V, Kumar R and Singh GN

In order to promote the awareness and to monitor the adverse drugs reactions, one of the most noteworthy nation-wide programme initiated by IPC on 15th April 2011 under the aegis of Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), is Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI). IPC is a National Coordination Centre (NCC) for PvPI, meant for protecting the health of the public by assuring medicines safety. PvPI monitors the benefitrisk profile of medicines & generate independent, evidence based recommendations on safety of medicines & support CDSCO for formulating safety related regulatory decisions for medicines.
With a view to establish a centre of excellence for pharmacovigilance in India, NCC-PvPI collaborated with the WHO-Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC), Sweden & participating in International Drug Monitoring Programme & now become a significant contributor for the global drug safety database. The WHO country office for India coordinates with NCC-PvPI in terms of providing technical support for organizing training programmes, awareness programmes,meetings and updating PV toolkit etc.
PvPI has been continuously taken several steps for ensuring patient safety and well being of society, in this regards PvPI expanded its patient safety programme to 150 AMCs across the country & also collaborated with different National Health Programme (AEFI, NACO, RNTCP) as it has been always preeminent to established safety and efficacy of medicines used in these NHP(s). As consumers / patients are the important allies for any country's pharmacovigilance programme, PvPI has taken step towards encouraging consumers reporting by the release of medicines side effect reporting form for consumers in different regional languages.
For the last two decades, pharmacovigilance has been gaining an increasing attention. It is now, high time for national authorities, multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations, healthcare institutions, pharmaceutical industries & lay public to work together for the effective implementation of PvPI across the country.