On March 07, the pharmaceutical forum “PHARMA@PATIENT FOCUS 2024. PHARMACOVIGILANCE” was held in Kyiv.
Organizers: State Enterprise "State Expert Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine" in cooperation with LLC "UkrKomExpo" with the support of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
The event, which gathered almost three hundred participants, was attended by pharmacovigilance specialists and experts from Ukraine, Poland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
International speakers include representatives of the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee European Medicines Agency (PRAC), Uppsala Monitoring Centre, the Swedish Medical Products Agency, and the Office for Registration of Medicinal Products, Medical Devices and Biocidal Products of Poland.
Guests and speakers also included representatives of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the State Service of Ukraine on Medicines and Drugs Control, the Public Health Center of Ukraine, representatives of the State Expert Center for pharmacovigilance in the regions, the pharmaceutical business, educators, scientists, physicians, representatives of professional associations, and the media (Apteka Weekly, The Pharma Media).
The Forum emphasized the important role of pharmacovigilance in Ukraine's health care system, issues of global medicinal product safety, and the conduct of pharmacovigilance in wartime.
Deputy Minister of Health for European Integration Maryna Slobodnichenko addressed the forum participants with a welcoming speech.
“We are on the path to the European Union, and we must already consider the issue of pharmacovigilance from the standpoint of how it will be in the future and talk about the changes expected in this process. We will talk about the processes that we will adopt from our European colleagues, which are required by the norms of European law. Your productive work today, the discussions and deliberations will be marked by a focus on European integration. And it is very significant that today's meeting takes place in a format that unites all interests,” said the Deputy Minister.
The Forum participants were also welcomed at the start of the event by Director of the State Expert Center Mykhailo Babenko. He recalled that this year marks exactly 25 years since Ukraine joined the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring (as an associate member from 1999 and as a full participant of the Programme from 2002).
Pharmacovigilance has developed especially in recent years. Despite the war, the temporary loss of territories and the destruction of health care facilities, the pharmacovigilance system in Ukraine not only functions fully and stably but also demonstrates further improvement.
At the same time, according to Mykhailo Babenko, no country has accomplished this complex task alone. Each shared its experience with the others.
“It is precisely for this purpose that we organized this Forum, to which we invited the best pharmacovigilance experts from Ukraine and Europe. In the sessions and panel discussions you will hear presentations that will inspire you and energize you with new ideas and tools for modernizing pharmacovigilance methods and systems at all levels, with a single goal – to make medicines safer for patients in Ukraine and around the world,” he stressed.
