Malawi becomes associate member of WHO drug safety monitoring programme
Malawi’s first pharmacovigilance centre was established at the College of Medicine in Blantyre, the country’s financial centre. “As Malawi was not a member of the global drug safety monitoring community we have relied on data from other countries. Realising the disparities that may exist in the side effects that occur in different countries, we wished to introduce pharmacovigilance in Malawi to collect data relevant to the country,” said the National Centre staff Ms N. Dzabala and Mrs F. Chimimba, who have received pharmacovigilance training in Uppsala and in Ghana, respectively. The centre has started training health care professionals on pharmacovigilance practices and plan to push for the inclusion of pharmacovigilance in the curricula of medical training institutions.