Development of Pharmacovigilance for Better Public Health in India

Pharmacovigilance basically is Detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse drug reaction associated with any drug or medicinal product. Detection- Refers to identification of adverse effect of drugs/ molecule. It starts from the moment when any molecule is given to human to assess its efficacy or safety. Assessment- It is basically drug relatedness of the AE/ADR. Understanding- To understand the causality of the ADR/AE. Prevention- To prevent that AE/ADR from occurring. The role of pharmaceutical industries in the improvement of pharmacovigilance system is very important to maintain the safety data, Detection and Evaluation of drug safety signals through manual and medical devices reporting. Maintaining public confidence has become very complex in aspect of drug safety. Pharmaceutical companies should proactively assess and manage risk related to any drug throughout its lifecycle, from development to post market surveillance instead of just monitoring it. To improve awareness about pharmacovigilance and reporting of ADRs various systems for reporting and effective National Programme measures are required. As proper ADR detection and reporting are the key role to this system; various regional, zonal and outer centres have been proposed. Anyone can report ADR by filling the suspect ADR reporting form to the nearest centre in suitable language available online or offline. Due to Indian huge population and mobile network connectivity, for timely and effective reporting of ADR a toll free number and the mobile app is also provided.