General practitioner from Riga receives an award for reporting adverse drug reactions

General practitioner from Riga receives an award for reporting adverse drug reactions

At the "Annual Awards in Medicine 2014" event on February 6th, 2015, organized by the Latvian Medical Association and the Ministry of Health Andris Baumanis, a general practitioner from Riga, received a special award from the State Agency of Medicines (SAM) for responsible and ethical behavior by reporting adverse drug reactions several times during the year.

In 2014 the general practitioner Andris Baumanis submitted to the State Agency of Medicines the most adverse drug reaction reports according to the number of reports from a single submitter, thus, displaying true understanding of pharmacovigilance or medicines safety monitoring. The pharmacovigilance system in Latvia provides that adverse drug reaction reports may be submitted by doctors, pharmacists, marketing authorisation holders, as well as patients themselves. The most convenient way to do this is on the SAM website www.zva.gov.lv by activating the banner Atklāj zāļu otru pusi (Reveal the other side of medicines).

SAM Director Inguna Adovica: "Doctors play an important role in discovering and preventing new risks related to the use of medicines, because the doctor receives information directly from the patient that can indicate a suspected adverse drug reaction. The submission of such information to the State Agency of Medicines is the duty of every doctor and it is also a responsible, ethical and important professional action in the interests of patient safety and public health."

Every year the State Agency of Medicines of Latvia receives more than 300 adverse drug reaction reports. The adverse drug reaction reports submitted to SAM are assembled in the European Union database EudraVigilance and are evaluated by pharmacovigilance experts, including experts from Latvia, in order to identify new risks related to the use of medicines throughout their lifecycle and to supplement information regarding safety of medicines.

Pharmacovigilance is a field that encompasses the study of data regarding safety of medicines with the objective of finding new information about adverse drug reactions and preventing potentially harmful effects on people. Globally pharmacovigilance has a history of 50 years; meanwhile in Latvia monitoring of the safety of medicines can be dated starting from 1999. With the help of the pharmacovigilance system and collective databases around the world it has been possible to prevent several calamities related to medicines. There have been cases where, basing on the adverse drug reaction reports submitted by doctors, medicines have been withdrawn from circulation, because their risks turned out to be greater than their benefits.