Twenty technicians from different hospital units in the province of Lunda Sul recently participated in a training session on pharmacovigilance and traditional medicines.
The training action, which analyzed topics related to reporting suspected adverse reactions to medications, aimed to increase awareness of the magnitude of the problem of safety when prescribing a medication and allow technicians to have the ability to dialogue with patients regarding the adverse reactions, in order to reduce the mortality rate.
At the opening ceremony, the head of the department of the Technological Medicines Regulatory Agency of the Ministry of Health (MINSA), João Mendonça, said that pharmacovigilance is a public health activity, whose objective is to identify, evaluate and prevent risks of use of medicines without a medical prescription.
According to Angop, pharmacovigilance consists of science and activities related to the detection, evaluation, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible problems related to the medicine.
The field of action of pharmacovigilance was recently expanded to include four products: herbal medicines, traditional and complementary medicines, blood medicines, biological products.