The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), under the Union health ministry which has recently been designated as the WHO collaborative centre for Pharmacovigilance (PV) in public health, will be focusing on TB, neglected tropical diseases, vector-borne diseases, HIV-AIDS among other such challenges as part of integrating PV programmes in public health systems for South East Asia Regulatory Network (SEARN) member countries.

An action plan has also been chalked out to support SEARN nation countries towards integrating their public health programmes with pharmacovigilance for patient safety.  This is also aimed to develop regulatory collaboration, convergence and reliance in the South-East Asia region over shared regulatory issues.

There are 7 WHO collaborative centres globally in pharmacovigilance and WHO collaborative centre for PV in public health and regulatory services from India will serve as the 8th centre.

Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) was the first WHO Collaborating Centre to be established for PV when, in 1978, the scientific and technical responsibility of the WHO programme for international drug monitoring was transferred to Sweden.

Through this initiative, the Central Drugs Standard Control Authority (CDSCO) of India which is also a member of SEARN will help member countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Korea, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor to build capacity and enable national regulatory authorities of respective nations to fulfill their mandates and safeguard public health.

IPC has also been assigned to update information on adverse drug reactions (ADRs) that is being reported in India from across all its centres through Vigiflow software to the UMC in Sweden, which is WHO's collaborating centre for international drug monitoring.

A common questionnaire in pharmacovigilance and Public Health for the SEARN countries will also be shared accordingly to better understand member countries programmes so that necessary support for developing and integrating PV programmes in their public health systems could be provided.

CDSCO under the Union health ministry had initiated a nation-wide Pharmacovigilance Programme of India (PvPI) in July 2010 with Ghaziabad based IPC as the national co-ordinating centre (NCC).

This initiative is very much relevant as many of the medicines used in public health programmes are new and have safety concerns associated with them. This includes collaboration with WHO and others on the establishment and training of a pharmacovigilance field force to actively assemble case information from the programme treatment centres.