Integration of National AIDS Control Program and Pharmacovigilance Program of India SciDoc Publishers | Open Access | Science Journals | Media Partners

This letter describes the initiatives taken by Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) in monitoring safety of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) drugs [1, 2, 3]. The Collaboration between National AIDS control organization (NACO) & Pharmacovigilance Program of India (PvPI) is aimed to work with periphery ART centres to monitor the safety of ART drugs & also to initiate the Cohort Event Monitoring (CEM) thus to perform the benefitrisk assessment of ART drugs, however there are some technical & operational issues in implementing the program & identifying the risk related to ART drugs. Pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention adverse effects or any other possible drug related problems [4]. It is an integral part of every public health program that uses medicines, optimizing their safety is paramount ( World Health Organization–Uppsala Monitoring Centre : http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/quality_safety/safety_efficacy/Pharmacovigilance_B.pdf) Failure to monitor, understand and manage these events can result in poor adherence and treatment failure and can reduces confidence of Public (UNAIDS I World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/tech_guidance_pharma.pdf). Therefore to ensure safe use of medicines and promote patients safety, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, launched a nationwide PvPI to monitor the safety of medicines. IPC functions as National Coordination Centre (NCC) for PvPI. To monitor adverse drug reactions (ADRs), and report to NCC, ADRs monitoring centres (AMCs) which are the medical institutions or corporate hospitals have been set up across the country [5]. IPC is an autonomous institution of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and functioning as NCC for PvPI which collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO) -Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC), Sweden. India has the third largest number of people living with HIV in the world, 2.1 million at the end of 2013 and accounts for about 4 out of 10 people living with HIV in the region, In India, the numbers of new HIV infections declined by 19 percent, yet it still accounted for 38 percent of all new HIV infections in the region. India recorded a 38 per cent decline in AIDS related deaths between 2005 and 2013. During this period, there was a major scale up of access to HIV treatment. At the end of 2013, more than 700,000 people were on ART, the second largest number of people on treatment in any single country (The Gap Report,