Nayab Farooq, Fatima Amin.
Role of community pharmacist in pharmacovigilance.
Khyber Med Uni Med J Jan ;11(3):181-3.

World Health Organization (WHO) defines pharmacovigilance as the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse drug reactions or any other possible drug related problems.1 Pharmacovigilance is important for the safe and efficient usage of drugs. Pharmacovigilance is just not an indicator its a discipline for detecting and reporting ADRs.2,3 In 1968 after thalidomide tragedy (phocomelia in babies, whose mothers have taken thalidomide during pregnancy) WHO established adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reporting system. WHO defines ADR as any response to a drug which is harmful and accidental and occurs at doses that are normally used in human for prophylaxis, diagnosis, treatment or the mitigation of disease.1 The Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) is the WHO cooperating center for global pharmacovigilance. The aim of UMC is to support and publicize patient protection through efficacious and worldwide pharmacovigilance practice. It provides autonomous and high excellent medical reference sources universally. It encourages indigenous pharmacovigilance initiatives by giving approach to passable resources and providing appropriate assistance.1 Pre marketing clinical trials do not give the sufficient knowledge about adverse drug reactions because the minimum number of population is included in these clinical trials and exposure time of targeted drug is also short so clinical trials are unable to detect those ADRs who are race specific or occur in 1/1000 or 1/10,000 ratio. Post marketing surveillance and pharmacovigilance are the essential steps to ensure the safety and efficacy of drug.4,5 Pakistan Framework The government of Pakistan in collaboration with drug regulatory authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has started the online pharmacovigilance (PVRSD) system in 2017. This program collects information from medicals professionals, pharmaceutical companies and patients on ADRs.

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