Public urged to report medicine side effects

Botswana Medicines Regulatory Authority ( BoMRA) this week observes # MedSafetyWeek and encourages people to be cautious and report suspected side effects of medicines.

Communications Officer at BoMRA, Mbaakanyi Macheke says BoMRA helps to improve the safety of medicines for all patients, and they have joined the world in raising awareness about this.

“People are encouraged to report suspected side effects of medicines as part of the global # MedSafetyWeek social media campaign that we have launched this week,” he said, explaining that the seventh annual # MedSafetyWeek runs until November 13th, as a way of encouraging everyone to report suspected side effects of medicines.

Macheke reiterates that all medicines may cause side effects in some patients, which is why everyone is advised to be vigilant. This year’s global campaign involves medicines regulators from 81 countries and focuses on the key role of every healthcare professional, patient, and carer who reports a suspected side effect and contributes to using medicines safely. Macheke further highlights that there are steps in place to continuously monitor people’s safety after medicines are placed on the market. “The purpose of safety monitoring is to gain more information about known side effects and find out about new ones. Regulators operate systems to detect and analyse those side effects and prevent harm to future patients,” he explained. He adds that, the mechanism run by BoMRA collects, organises, and investigates reports of suspected side effects, and this has been helpful since its inception. “Since it was created, it has helped identify several safety issues which were not previously recognised as being linked to a particular medicine until BoMRA receives information from reports,” said Macheke.

For his part Manager Pharmacovigilance at BoMRA, Lebogang Koitsiwe, said that reporting side effects of medicine is ideal and minimises any risks that may occur. “Every report made by a patient, a healthcare professional, or a carer plays a key role in gaining more knowledge about the benefits and risks of medicines in clinical use and allows action to be taken to minimise risks,” said Koitsiwe.

Macheke reiterated that by reporting suspected side effects to the authority, they are actively participating in identifying emerging safety issues, and thereby allowing BoMRA to take action when necessary.

The public and healthcare professionals can report suspected side effects to BoMRA through their different platforms, including: MedSafety App, E- Reporting on the BoMRA Website and Paper based reporting.