To enable better healthcare services to all, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) is planning to embark on a mission to strengthen its pharmacovigilance and haemovigilance programme across country to another level. This they are planning to do by bringing new adverse drug reaction centres under its fold and also by asking drug manufacturers to start patient safety monitoring units.

With this agenda in mind, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) recently inaugurated the haemovigilance cell at the Cuttack Medical College in Odisha. Through this initiative more and more medical colleges are being bought under this programme designed to ensure timely reporting of the ADR across country. Apart from this, from 2014 the centre is going to make it mandatory for all the drug manufacturing unit to maintain a patient safety monitoring unit across spectrum for timely reporting of the ADR activities directly to the centre.

Dr G N Singh, the DCGI informed that henceforth all the companies will have to furnish a detailed surveillance report on any ADR activities to their respective state drug controllers office and zonal offices for immediate action. “Our office takes the health of all the leaving beings with highest priority, it is with this in mind we have decided to widen our scope relating healthcare with special focus on animal healthcare as well, from this year We understand that for this to happen proper ADR reporting is a must and this we plan to ensure by focusing on strengthening and further empowering our PvPI and haemovigilance programme,” he stressed.

The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) which is the nodal agency for the PvPI programme had just recently bifurcated and started haemovigilance and biovigilance programme under the aegis of the Pharmacovigilance Programme of India, to ensure better steps to safeguard the health of the patients in the country. Dr Singh informed that with this initiative, the commission plans to broaden its scope to emphasis more on the other aspects of healthcare more predominately for patients welfare which includes human as well as animals.

At present, there are about 90 medical colleges, laboratories and hospitals across the country registered under the PvPI programme, playing a very important role in monitoring and signalling timely updates on the ADR reports of the drugs running in the market. Through this ADR centres, IPC have been successfully able to collect a huge data base of 48,000 ADR reports from different parts of the country till date.