The Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA) has created an online platform, in cooperation with Sweden-based Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC), for healthcare providers to report pharmaceutical products that are ineffectual or have adverse side effects. The four-decade-old UMC is the field name of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring. It is an independent centre concerned with ensuring drug safety and effective use of medicines. The EDA managed to form a strategy to enhance Egypt's global position in the Pharmacovigilance (drug safety) field, Yassin Ragae, head of the pharmaceutical care sector in the authority said. The authority has secured Egypt's participation in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring (PIDM) and many other drug safety projects, in cooperation with the WHO, he added. The new platform follows the drug authority's Egyptian Pharmaceutical Vigilance Centre (EPVC), which was established in 2009 to encourage healthcare providers to report any problems related to the use of some drugs, including drug interaction, misuse or unlicensed use of medicine, treatment errors, problems caused by the use of counterfeit medications and defects in pharmaceutical products. The platform provides a report form for problems related to coronavirus cases and a separate form for problems related to other cases. The Egyptian Ministry of Health and relevant authorities have recalled many medications over the past years over health concerns. A report issued by the EPVC in 2018 ordered the recall of 14 medications for containing valsartan. Valsartan, which has been used for decades to treat hypertension, was found to be contaminated with dimethylformamide (DMF), a substance that the WHO says increases the risk of cancer.
