Drugs side-effects, reactions reporting centres in all medical colleges in India soon

Now patients, doctors and other health care providers in India can report side-effects and reactions from medicines to the nearest medical colleges in their locality.

The government has decided to start around 300 centres for reporting side-effects and other adverse reactions from the commonly used medicines in India.

The government has listed out 7 very commonly used but likely to cause side-effects  and adverse reactions medicines including nimesulide (used to bring down fever in kids) and the new generation anti-diabetes pills containing rosiglitazone.

All the seven medicines listed including nimesulide, anti-depression drug Deanxit, decongestant phenylpropanolamine, antibiotic gatifloxacine and rosiglitazone (Avandia) have been banned in several countries due to adverse side effects.

These drugs are either under restricted use or undergoing rigorous clinical testing to ascertain their safety in human use in several markets.

In India, there are no drugs monitoring centres actively involved in pharmacovigilance at the moment.

More medicines will soon be added to the list of drugs to be monitored for adverse reactions.

The health ministry under the government of India was considering the proposal to set up drug side-effects monitoring centres –or so-called pharmacovigilance centres– in all medical colleges across the country.

As the first step, 10 such medicines side-effects monitoring centres will be set up in ten medical colleges

30 medical colleges will have such centres by March next year. And the programme will be extended to 300 colleges in the next five years.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, will be the nodal centre co-ordinating the various pharmacovigilances cells across the country.

India drug surveillance or pharmacovigilance programme launched in 2004 is currently rudimentary covering only 21 centres across the country.

These centres include two zonal centres at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi covering north and east and the KEM Hospital in Mumbai monitoring the southern and western regions in India.

There are five regional Pharmacovigilance Centres at Kolkata, Pondicherry (JIPMER), Nagpur and Mumbai with two centres. There are several periphery centres including Bangalore at the Victoria Hospital, Goa, and Mysore within JSS College of Pharmacy.

Currently, Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) — the advisory council which provide technical information regarding drug products to the DCGI are examining some of the drugs which are being used for indications that are not approved by the authority.