As a step towards producing skilled workforce to further pharmaco-vigilance (PV) in India, around 50 healthcare professionals will be trained every alternate month under the guidance of Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), which is the national coordination center (NCC) for Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI) under the union health ministry from January 15, 2018 onwards.
Around 350 qualified pharmacovigilance personnel have already been trained last year under Union health ministry's skill development programme on regulatory aspects of pharmacovigilance (PV) to strengthen the 250 adverse drug reaction (ADR) monitoring centres (AMCs) in the country.
“Aimed to strengthen PvPI, this initiative will open up employment avenues in companies which have incorporated PV cells. Professionals from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Chandigarh and Delhi will be trained in the first phase. PvPI has gained a lot of prominence as India has also been nominated to help other WHO member countries in PV through integration it with healthcare programmes,”said Dr V Kalaiselvan, principal scientific officer, IPC.
As part of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, this programme will also initiate the process of creating a registry of skills, enable and mobilize a large number of healthcare professionals towards strengthening of Qualified Persons for Pharmacovigilance (QPPv) as per the requirement of the Schedule Y of Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
The national coordination center (NCC) of IPC under the union health ministry started the skill development programme in January 2017 at Ghaziabad to nurture PV professionals in the country.
Meanwhile, Government has also developed an advanced version of the android mobile app which empowers all the healthcare professionals and consumers for Adverse Drugs Reaction (ADR) reporting.
The mobile application which has been developed keeping in mind the patients, consumers and healthcare professionals is now available online for stakeholders. Through this application, related images of ADR and lab investigation reports can be attached in a user-friendly manner for clinical assessment and signal detection.
IPC is an autonomous institution of the ministry of health and family welfare created to set standards of drugs in the country. It’s basic function is to update regularly the standards of drugs commonly required for treatment of diseases prevailing in this region.
The mobile application by the name “ADR PvPI” Android mobile app for ADR reporting has been developed to have administrative control of data with IPC, NCC-PvPI.
PV is a science that relates to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse affects or any other drug related problem. To track adverse drug reactions in Indian population, union health ministry launched PvPI which has outreach all over the country.