PV Newsletter V5 ISSUE 2 Sep 2015

Use of medicines is associated with risks that include occurrence of adverse drug reactions, treatment failure and /or, medication error. Adverse drug events may be seen in clinical trials, but this effect becomes clearly seen only when the medicines are widely prescribed. Safe medicine use requires patient education about the proper use of medicines, adverse drug reactions, drug interaction, and treatment failure that could arise as a result of improper use, and so it requires health provider’s commitment to review patient drug therapy and ensure minimum risk for the individual patient. Adverse drug reaction is unexpected, un intended, undesired or excessive response to drug with sequelae and so, we should participate in mechanisms that monitor the safety drug use in high risk populations (e.g. older people, children, HIV/AIDS patient, pregnant women). We should lead education of individual patients regarding potential adverse drug reactions. Hence – We health providers should be part of the solution by reporting adverse drug events that we encounter in our daily activity at health facilities to the concerned body , FMHACA, to prevent the occurrence of adverse drug reactions, medication errors and use of poor quality and effective products on other patients.