IPC set to become first WHO Collaborating Centre in SE Asia

Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is set to emerge as the first WHO Collaborating Centre for safety of medicines and vaccines in the south-east Asia, union health minister J P Nadda said in New Delhi yesterday.

According to Nadda, drug-safety related issues posed a major challenge for healthcare professionals, regulators and pharmaceuticals industry and this was where Pharmacovigilance, the monitoring of adverse effects of drugs, played a significant role in ensuring quality and efficacy of medical products.

The minister was addressing the 38th Annual Meeting of Representatives of the National Pharmacovigilance Centres participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring, jointly organised by IPC and WHO.

With the changes in the way people took medicines, Nadda underlined the importance of pharmacovigilance saying that India had made considerable progress in the field in the last five years.

"Considerable progress has been made by the India Pharmacovigilance Programme over the last few years, including setting up of pharmacovigilance system in tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS related public health programmes," he said, after inaugurating the 38th annual meeting of National Pharmacovigilance Centres.

Nadda emphasised that the success of pharmacovigilance depended on state of art reporting, cutting edge use of information and communications technology to process and analyse information for immediate corrective measures.

This needed to be supported by a highly calibrated audit process, he added. He added that building a strong pharmacovigilance frame-work in all countries was essential for ensuring public health outcomes which would require close collaboration between a large number of professionals and multi-constituency stakeholders - both nationally and internationally, and internationally recognised standards on pharmacovigilance.

According to Nadda, India was committed to ensuring patient safety in the country and to building strong working relations with other countries with respect to healthcare system, including pharmacovigilance system.

He said, the Pharmacovigilance Programme was launched by the government in 2010 to address the impact of adverse reactions on patients.