The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) has urged citizens to hastily report any side effects of drugs to prevent further harm or loss of life.
Speaking during the launch of the seventh annual MedSafety week on Tuesday, MCAZ spokesperson Davison Kaiyo said all medicines may have side effects in some patients, hence the need to take safety precautions before they are placed on the market.
“Safety monitoring aims to gain more information about known side effects and discover new ones. Regulators operate systems to detect and analyze those side effects and prevent harm to future patients,” Kaiyo said.
“Pharmacovigilance and Clinical Trials Division, which is the National Pharmacovigilance Centre, under the MCAZ, collects, organizes, and investigates reports of suspected side effects. Since it was created, it has helped identify several safety issues which were not previously recognized as being linked to a particular medicine until the MCAZ received information from reports.
“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 the action to be taken to minimize risks,” he added.
MCAZ is responsible for protecting public and animal health by ensuring that accessible medicines and allied substances and medical devices are safe, effective and of good quality through enforcement of adherence to standards by manufacturers and distributors.
