January 24, 2014

Global Medicines Faculty Participate in an I-TECH Co-Sponsored Pharmacovigilance Training in Ukraine

Andy Stergachis, along with faculty from Ukraine, conducted a 5-day training workshop titled, “Pharmacovigilance of Medicines for HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis in Ukraine” December 9-13, 2013 in Kiev. The training workshop was developed and offered by the Ukraine National Training Center (UNTC), with support from the UW International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH). In addition to Stergachis, the faculty consisted of the head of infectious diseases, Gromashevskiy Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases of National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (NAMSU); the Head of the Physiology Department, Yanovsky Institute for  and Pulmonology of NAMSU; and the Director of the Department of Post-Registration Surveillance, State Expert Center of Ministry of Public Health of Ukraine, which is their national pharmacovigilance center.

Attendees were teams of physicians specializing in HIV, TB or pharmacovigilance from the various regions of Ukraine.

The objectives of the workshop were:

1. Identify and clinically manage adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to  medicines used for HIV/AIDS and TB and co-infections.
2. Understand the role of co-infections and associated co-morbidities, drug interactions and other risk factors in affecting treatment outcomes and assessment of such treatment outcomes.
3. Identify the different methods used for pharmacovigilance, their  strengths and weaknesses, and the need for a multidisciplinary approach for effective implantation of such methods.
4. Build practical skills in the identification, proper documentation,  and timely communicating of ADRs and treatment ineffectiveness for drugs used for HIV/AIDS, TB and co-infections.