FMIC

​One-day workshop on pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reactions for FMIC staff was conducted today. Attended by 42 doctors, nurses and pharmacists, it was a part of the Strengthening Pharmaceutical System (SPS) project which has been launched by the General Directorate of Pharmaceutical Affairs (GDPA) at Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) with the help of United States Agency for International Development (USAID).The project aims to strengthen MoPH’s ability to improve the rational use of medicine, monitor the quality of pharmaceutical products used and exported from the country and establish a coordinated procurement and distribution system.

FMIC is one of four hospitals which have been designated to provide training and build capacity of health care providers in pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reactions. The other three governmental hospitals are Istiqlal, Antani and Mehtarlam Provincial Hospital in Laghman.

Inaugurating the workshop, Dr Abdullah Fahim, Chief Executive and Medical Director, said that pharmacovigilance and patient safety were the main objectives of MoPH and was looking to start joint programmes with health care institutes throughout Afghanistan. He added that FMIC was ready to start the programme and had no problems with implementing this intervention. Meanwhile Dr Mohammad Zafar Omari the Strengthening Pharmaceutical Systems (SPS) project chief of party emphasized the importance of pharmacovigilance and it is implementation.  “We can implement the pharmacovigilance through reporting of adverse drug reaction (ADR) cases to relevant body in GDPA and we have already started this programme in three hospitals while the FMIC is the fourth one.”

Dr Omari added that fortunately Afghanistan was an associate member of Uppsala Monitoring Center located in Sweden. He said, this relationship would technically help the members of Medicine Safety Committee to analyse and evaluate their received reports.

During the workshop participants worked practically on three different scenarios of adverse drug reaction and later shared their findings with the larger group. 

The workshop included presentations and group work facilitated by Mohammad Shafiq Mashal, Lecturer, Faculty of Pharmacy, Kabul University and Dr Mohammad Zafar Omari, Dr Faiz Mohammad Delawer and Dr Mahmood Samim from USAID SPS project.​