NCC-PvPI To Join Hands With Pharm D Institutions For Collecting ADR Information
New Delhi, 5 Sept 2019:
In association with pharmacy colleges that run Pharm D programmes, the National Coordination Centre (NCC) for Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI) will collect adverse drug reaction (ADR) information from hospitals in order to expand the programme throughout the country.
In this regard, Dr. Jai Prakash, the officer-incharge of PvPI has written a letter to the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) requesting Council’s support. NCC has also shared the copies of the letter with all the principals and HoDs of pharmacy institutions.
Speaking to Pharmabiz, Dr. Jai Prakash said as part of curriculum, the students of Pharm D collect ADRs from hospitals for their project work. They can share this information with the ADR monitoring centres (AMCs) to understand the benefit and risk of medicines. Besides, this way of collection by students will help to ensure effective implementation of PvPI all over the country. This is an opportunity for the pharmacy colleges to contribute their part to the patient safety, he felt.
Regarding cooperation from institutions, he said several of the institutions are now in touch with NCC and they assign their students of Pharm D to report the ADR information to the AMCs or to the nearest national coordination centre of the PvPI directly.
Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) that functions as the national coordination center for the PvPI hopes that this joint effort by NCC and PCI will help the pharmacovigilance programme to expand all over the country. Currently, 270 AMCs are functioning in various places in India. The Union health ministry wants to increase the number of ADCs to 1,000 this year.
“The students can report serious ADRs. A reaction is serious when the patient outcome is either death or life-threatening or hospitalization or disability or congenital anomaly or required intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage. They should also report on non-serious, known or unknown, frequent or rare ADR due to medicines, vaccines and herbal products. Adverse event following immunization can also be reported”, he said by adding that all healthcare professionals including clinicians, dentists, pharmacists and nurses are the authorized persons to report ADRs. NCC has given separate forms to be filled up with ADR information.
Except two colleges from Maharashtra, all the colleges that run Pharm D program are in the private sector. So, this ADR information collection will be on the lines of a public-private tie-up between institutions and NCC-PvPI. The registrar of the PCI has sent copies of the letter and ADR reporting formats to all the pharmacy colleges. Pharmabiz