Doctors at the news meet to announce the three-day conference on pharmacovigilance at IMA Hall in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, Nov. 16: Society of Pharmacovigilance will organise a three-day conference at Nalanda Medical College from November 18 to encourage doctors to document the adverse effects of various drugs.

Stressing the need for greater awareness on the negative effects of drugs at a news meet today, Dr Harihar Dikshit, the secretary of the organising committee, said pharmacovigilance is the field of science related to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects, particularly long-term and short-term side effects, of medicines.

“Pharmacovigilance is the science of collecting, monitoring, researching, assessing and evaluating information from healthcare providers and patients on the adverse effects of medications, biological products, ayurvedic and traditional medicines with a view to identify information about the hazards associated with medicines and prevent harm to patients,” said Dr Dikshit.

He added that not many doctors consider it a serious matter when patients suffer from complications associated with some medicines.

“We now want to spread message among doctors not to ignore these complaints and maintain a feedback form. These inputs can later be compiled, assessed and sent to the Centre for further assessment,” said Dr U.C. Issar, a senior member of the society.

Dr Issar added that the process of collecting information about any drug begins in phase I of the clinical trial. The process continues after the approval of the drug. Several post-market safety studies, made mandatory by drug regulatory agencies around the world, are also conducted on the drugs.

“There is not much awareness about such issues in our country, and especially in the state. So, we want to use this platform to call for larger attention towards the need to understand the adverse effects of a drug. Clinical trials involve several thousand patients and the less common side effects are often unknown when a drug enters the market. Even very severe side effects such as liver damage are often undetected at the clinical trial-stage because the study populations are small. So, it is important that doctors become more responsible,” said Dr Dikshit.

Prominent doctors from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore and abroad will take part in the three-day conference at Nalanda Medical College, which would be inaugurated by the health department principal secretary, Amarjeet Sinha.