Going with its commitment to strengthen the Pharmcovigilence Programme of India (PvPI), the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is in the process of identifying 30 new adverse drug reaction monitoring centres (AMCs) under PvPI by March 2015. It is understood that the Commission is currently in the process of discussion with medical colleges and the government hospitals to gauge their interest in collaborating with IPC.

To ensure pan India presence for getting adverse event information from the patients from across the spectrum, IPC is keenly focussing on bringing the hospitals under the rural and urban areas under its fold. Till now, it was the hospitals and medical colleges from the metropolitan cities that had been mainly enrolled as AMCs for the PvPI.

Dr V Kalaiselvan, senior scientific officer from the IPC informed that the main aim behind this move is to ensure that even the hospitals and medical centres across the rural and urban areas are also covered under the PvPI programme. “IPC have been consistently increasing the number of AMCs within its fold, as they play a very important role in the collection and follow-up of ADR reports from the patients. We are closely following up and working with the 30 centres, to enroll with us, through whom we can have a wider and more efficient network of ADR reporting to strengthen the PvPI further,” he added.

With the addition, the total number of AMCs enrolled within the IPC under the pharmacovigilence programme will be 180. Currently there are 150 registered AMCs across the country that plays very important role in timely reporting of adverse drug reaction to IPC, which acts as the national co-ordinating centre for PvPI programme. Dr Kalaiselvan informed that once enrolled NCC will provide all kind of logistic and technical support to AMCs for their smooth functioning.

Interestingly, any medical colleges, hospitals, medical institutes, central as well as autonomous, public health programmes or corporate hospitals approved by the medical council of India (MCI) can act as AMCs. Once enrolled they are required to efficiently collect the adverse event information from the patients, do follow up with them to check the completeness of the ADR reports as required followed by entering information in the Vigiflow and sending them to NCC via the same software.