By Belize Live News Staff: Belize is building a system to answer exactly that question.
The Ministry of Health and Wellness held a three day workshop with support from the Pan American Health Organization to advance a National Post-Market Surveillance System for medicines and vaccines.
Post-market surveillance is what happens after a product is approved and in use. Clinical trials only tell you so much. Real world use across thousands of patients can surface side effects, quality failures, or counterfeit products that testing never caught.
The system being built here covers all of that. It combines safety monitoring for medicines and vaccines with the detection of quality problems, substandard and falsified products, and unregistered products circulating in the country.
Belize recently became a full member of the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring, and is now using pharmacovigilance tools including VigiFlow and VigiMobile.
Officials from government, health facilities, academia, the private sector and patient organisations took part.
The message from the workshop was that tools alone are not enough. Clear responsibilities, good reports and fast feedback are what make a system work.
Have you ever reported a reaction to a medication?
