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The Minister of Health, María Ángeles Palacios, opened the VIII Conference on Pharmacovigilance taking place today and tomorrow in the Auditorium and Congress Center "Victor Villegas" de Murcia.

These sessions will address various issues, ranging from the very security of the medicines we consume medication errors, to issues such as the effects of certain drugs on large populations, ie pharmacoepidemiology.

Only in 2007 Health Authority received 283 notifications of drugs suspected to cause adverse reactions, compared to the 216 alerts in 2006, ie 31 percent more than last year.

María Ángeles Palacios said that pharmacovigilance is "a public health activity aimed to analyze and manage the risks of drugs after they have been marketed."

Given the complexity of the pharmacological activity, "in this conference we have tried to accommodate everyone from the pharmaceutical industry to health authorities, through their own pharmacists and nurses," said the minister.

And for all this, because of the complexity and variety of actors involved, that "collaboration is necessary and also shared between the different authorities in order to offer and make available to the public, drug quality, safety and efficiency and all the necessary information to make reasonable use of the same. "

The meeting, in addition to the 250 registered specialists, national experts who attend know the current issues surrounding pharmacovigilance.

Among the speakers include José Antonio Navarro Alonso, Chief of Prevention and Health Protection of the Ministry of Health, and Dr. Beatriz Garrido Corro, Pharmacy Service, Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca.

Also, among the guests, there are experts like Manuel Suárez Michaels, Department of Pharmacy of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville (USA) and Dr. Javier Soto Alvarez, head of the Department of Health Outcomes Research in the United Medical at Pfizer, a leading global pharmaceutical company, founded in the United States in 1849.

Under the motto "The current situation of pharmacovigilance ', the conference is organized jointly by the Ministry of Health, through the Directorate General of Planning, Financing Health and Pharmaceutical Policy, and the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Health Products.

As part of the same, and prior to his inauguration, met yesterday afternoon, the Security Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CSMH), an advisory body to the Ministry of Health responsible for assessing the potential adverse effects of drugs and recommend the Ministry to conduct proceedings.

The Spanish System of Pharmacovigilance

Parallel to the recommendations of CSMH, since 1984 the Spanish System of Pharmacovigilance for Medicinal Products for Human Use (SEFV) receives and analyzes reports of suspected drugs cause adverse reactions.

The resulting data are included in a database called the Adverse Reactions Pharmacovigilance Data Spanish, Phaedra, which assesses the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products, who finally makes an appropriate decision.

The SEFV it comprises a network of 17 pharmacovigilance centers, one in each region, coordinated by the Spanish Medicines Agency.

In the Region of Murcia pharmacovigilance center operating since 1992, currently depending DG Planifiación Financing, Health and Pharmaceutical Policy.

According to 2007 data, of the 283 alerts received, 64 percent had their origin within the hospitals themselves, while the remaining 35 percent was for community settings.

The suspected drugs were part of different groups such as the anticancer therapeutic (26 percent of the alerts), anti-infectives (25 percent), those for the nervous system (12 percent), the metabolic system, digestive (11 percent ) and cardiovascular medications (7 percent).

Source: CARM