From 6 to 12 November, ConcePTION will take part in the global #MedSafetyWeek campaign, a collaboration involving more than 80 medicines regulatory agencies and several non-governmental organisations, to raise awareness about the importance of reporting side effects of medicines. And for pregnant women to report every time they are exposed to a medicine, to help close the knowledge gap in medicine safety for pregnancy and lactation. With the theme ‘Who can report?’, this year’s campaign will focus on the key role of every patient, woman, doctor, nurse, and pharmacist who reports a side effect or exposure and contributes to safe medicine use.
All medicines agencies operate systems to detect and analyse side effects of medicines. The purpose of safety monitoring is to gain more information about known side effects and find out about new ones. Constantly collecting and monitoring information from the reports received helps identify risks associated with medicines and act to minimise harm.
There are several ways to report that a pregnant woman has used a particular medicine. The different registries are interested in what is often called exposures (when a woman used a particular medicine). The ConcePTION project will build a system where this information can be compared with other important pregnancy information such as miscarriages, stillbirth and malformations, and how children develop. Every report counts!
How can we stimulate reporting of medicine use in pregnancy & breastfeeding? We have developed a step-by-step guide for developing communications campaigns to stimulate reporting of medicine use during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The toolkit provides hands-on guidance for TIS-centres, health authorities and other stakeholders to support them in setting up their local, tailored campaigns.
#MedSafetyWeek is an international campaign led by Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC), the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring. The campaign is supported by WHO and by members of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory authorities (ICMRA). ConcePTION’s participation to the campaign has been an annual occurrence, and an important tool to connect our messaging about pregnancy and breastfeeding to the overarching discussions about medicine safety in the global community.
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