The East African Advanced Course on Pharmacovigilance was held in Asmara, Eritrea from 10th to 16th April 2016 under the theme “Developing Proactive Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management Strategies in East Africa”. This course brought together 81 participants from 10 African countries acting in their individual capacities as experts and/or stakeholders in pharmacovigilance (PV) in Africa and six countries from Asia, USA and Europe. 

On Monday 11 April, H. E. Amina Nurhussien, Honorable Minister of Health, in her opening speech in which senior government and Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) officials and Ambassadors took part, said that Eritrea is proud to host such an important course that gives priority to the health of the public.  The Eritrean Pharmacovigilance Centre is among the functional and successful Pharmacovigilance Centers in Africa.  For the past few years the Eritrean Pharmacovigilance Center has been working with different strategies to harmonize the Pharmacovigilance program, enhance detection and reporting rate of drug related problems and improve quality management systems. As a result, Eritrea has been rated among the top reporting countries in Africa with high completeness grading of the individual case safety reports submitted to the global database.

Her Honorable Minister highlighted also that Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) has become the main cause for morbidity and mortality in developing countries due to lack of drug regulatory system. In view of this, she expressed gratefulness for organizing this timely course that will help countries in the region and beyond to develop institutional capacity of monitoring and founding common understanding to mitigate medication errors and control falsified and substandard medicines. This advanced course was organized in partnership with the Ministry of Health and WHO. 

In this respect, Dr. Josephine Namboze, WHO Representative in Eritrea, in her remarks at the opening of the course expressed her confidence that the meeting would give new vigour to pharmacovigilance in Eritrea and the region.  Eliciting the importance of  Pharmacovigilance, she  underscored the prominence of integrating it into other public health programs and investing significant efforts towards improving communication with health care professionals, patients and the communities at large to convey accurate information about medicines and optimize drug safety. 

On Sunday April 10, 2016 a pre-course meeting was facilitated with the participants to assess and tailor the scope and depth of the topics and optimize the expected needs of the audience. Guided and facilitated by internationally renowned and qualified experts and key note speakers from WHO and other educators, all the course objectives set for the week were successfully achieved.

The one week meeting also held a half day symposium titled “Way forward for accelerating Pharmacovigilance Harmonization in East and Horn of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities”. After very lively discussions in the presence of the Minister of Health of Eritrea, Hon. Mrs. Amina Nurhussien and the WHO Country Representative for Eritrea, Dr Josephine Namboze, and the satellite symposium came out with six summarized action points aiming for a Pan-African harmonization of pharmacovigilance. 

At the end of the course, participating countries present expressed their pleasure and satisfaction at the professional content of the meeting and at the generous and friendly hospitality of the Eritrean Ministry of Health.

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Below:

01. Dr Josephine Namboze WHO Representative in Eritrea delivering  her remarks

02. H E Amina Nurhussien, Minister of Health making an opening speech