Over the past months, specialists of the Pharmacovigilance Department of the Center have been making every effort to inform healthcare professionals and the public about the importance of providing information on any issues related to the safety of medicinal products.
Among the events:
- joint monitoring visits with WHO to the regions of Ukraine to assess the implementation of the COVID-19 Vaccination Roadmap;
- regular participation of the Center's specialists in meetings of the boards of the Departments/Directorates of Health of the regions on issues related to pharmacovigilance;
- preparation and publication on the Center's official website, Facebook page and Telegram channel of weekly reports on the safety of the use of COVID-19 vaccines in Ukraine;
- development of an AISF chatbot to simplify work with the Automated Information System for Pharmacovigilance;
- giving presentations on pharmacovigilance issues at World Health Organization trainings for regional coordinators, regional trainers and specialists of mobile teams carrying out vaccination against COVID-19, and others.
The result of systematic, daily work has been an increase in the number of report forms received by the Center from healthcare professionals of Ukraine. In June, 15% more were received than in May.
Particularly active were the Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy regions. The number of report forms from these regions increased by 40-60%.
Let us recall that pharmacovigilance is one of the main tasks in ensuring patient safety. Medicinal products, including vaccines, are monitored during their use on the territory of Ukraine. Healthcare professionals submit to the Automated Pharmacovigilance Information System (APIS) information on cases of adverse reactions and/or lack of efficacy of medicinal products, and cases of adverse events following immunization/tuberculin. The goal of pharmacovigilance is the availability in Ukraine of high-quality, effective and safe medicinal products.
