Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) has launched its 9th Annual Safety Week Campaign, aligning with the global initiative to encourage patients to report adverse reactions to medicines.
The MedSafety Week Campaign aims to raise awareness on the importance of safe medicine use and to empower individuals to play an active role in monitoring the safety of medications.
Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) Public Relations Officer Mr Davison Kaiyo emphasised the significance of patient reporting.
“The #MedSafety Week is a global campaign which runs for a week on an annual basis. So this year, this is our ninth campaign. The idea of this campaign is to encourage people to report any side effects that they may experience after taking medicines. We know that quite a number of people, they take medicines to treat different ailments and diseases. But however, there are some people that then react to these medicines, what we normally call side effects or the adverse reactions to medicines. So this campaign aims at highlighting the need for people to report whenever they experience these kind of side effects after taking medicines,” he said.
The MCAZ, as the National Pharmacovigilance Centre, conducts post-market surveillance of medicines. Patients can report side effects through healthcare providers, online platforms and social media platforms.
“The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe is the National Pharmacovigilance Centre. We actually have a pharmacovigilance division that looks into these issues. So what normally happens is what we call the post-market surveillance of medicines. So the reporting of side effects of medicines is actually one way where the patients themselves can help us to make sure that the medicines that are on the markets are safe, of good quality, and they’re effective. They do this by reporting to us. So, for example, if one takes a medicine and they are not feeling too well after taking that medicine, they report to us through even their health service provider or our online platforms that we do have.
“So the moment that they report those things to us, we then launch investigations. We want to ascertain if it is the medicine. If it is an individual case, we then do our own investigations. So after the investigations, it can then tell us if it is the medicines that is really causing these side effects. And the moment that we realize the cause, if the medicine is the cause, and depending on the severity of the issue, it can lead to a recall of medicines depending on, again, the severity of issues. So there are a number of processes that we do. There are investigations, laboratory testings, and things like that to make sure that the reports that we get from members of the public contribute in making sure that the medicines that are on the market, they are safe, they are of good quality, and they are effective. So members of the public can actually walk into the MCA’s head and report, go to our online platforms, social media handles. They can report to us even via WhatsApp,” he added.
The global MedSafety Week campaign, running from the 4th to 10th of this month, has brought together a staggering 107 organisations from 94 countries, including Zimbabwe, in a united effort to promote medication safety and encourage reporting of adverse reactions.
