Keen to explore the full potential of the doctors in the country to further strengthen the Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI), the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) recently had a high level discussion with the Indian Medical Association (IMA). The aim behind this move is to broaden the involvement of the medical community in adverse drug reporting across the country.
It is understood that this move will strategically help in boosting the PvPI programme as it will enable greater role for the private practitioners as well in ADR reporting. It is important to note that currently only government hospitals, institutions and colleges are directly involved in the process, while the private practitioners are not fully part of this.
According to Dr. G N Singh, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), this is a planned out move as IMA as a professional body representing over 3.6 lakh medical practitioners can act as a game changer and strong ally in the country's PvPI programme. "Most importantly, this is a patient centric move as doctors play a very important role in the health care system. They are the main interface between the patients and the medicines, making them a very important player in the ADR system. Making them a partner in this programme will certainly help us get far better results in understanding and tackling the remedial affects of the medicines for enacting stronger and patient centric regulation," he added.
As per the reports, IPC will be providing training to the doctors on how to timely report ADR and also to sensitise the patients to recognise adverse reactions to enable proper detection. Dr. Kalaiselvan from IPC stressed that the success of this programme primarily depends on the competency and spontaneity of the doctors in identifying the indications, thus having such a strong work force behind this process will certainly help us.
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