| The world of medicines and drugs can indeed be | | | | government. Nothing can be as devastating as a drug |
| quite interesting and exciting with new life saving and | | | | disaster and in the US, the Food and Drug |
| other drugs being invented by science. While this can | | | | Administration(FDA) takes great pains to ensure that |
| be life saving and disease annihilating, there is also the | | | | improper drugs are not released into the market. |
| possibility of many side effects resulting on account | | | | Clinical trials of drugs are generally limited and |
| of the consumption of these drugs. There have been | | | | restricted in their scope as testing involves only a |
| many instances of loss of life as well as severe | | | | few thousand human beings. That's the reason why |
| complications due to patients being administered | | | | even very severe adverse drug reactions like liver |
| drugs that have reacted with their systems and | | | | damage are often not noticed because the study |
| caused many after effects. It is with a view to | | | | populations are small. Post marketing |
| analyzing these effects that drug safety | | | | pharmacovigilance makes use of tools like gathering |
| pharmacovigilance has been brought into effect as a | | | | data and investigation of case reports to recognize |
| field of medico-scientific enquiry. | | | | the association between drugs and their adverse |
| As the term implies, pharmacovigilance means being | | | | drug reactions. |
| careful, alert and mindful of drugs. The specific | | | | When the drug is released into the market, it would |
| emphasis in drug safety pharmacovigilance is studying | | | | be administered to hundreds of thousands or even |
| the short term, medium term and long term after | | | | millions of patients. It is here that it should stand the |
| effects of various drugs. Drug safety is of great | | | | test of being after effects free. Drug safety |
| concern to doctors, patients and their families as well | | | | pharmacovigilance precisely tests this. |
| as the whole medical community and even the | | | | |