Join us for the first-ever International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP) Africa chapter conference from July 22 – 24 in Kampala, Uganda. With more than 250 pharmacovigilance experts, regulators, and industry professionals expected to attended, the conference will focus on the theme, “Advancing Pharmacovigilance Practice in Africa: Moving from Data Collection to Data-Driven Decision Making.” USP is a proud silver sponsor of this year’s event.
USP participation
Silver sponsor presentation
TBD
Monitoring the safety and efficacy of vaccines and medicines doesn’t stop once they’re approved and available for patient use. Post marketing surveillance or pharmacovigilance is important for ensuring safe, effective, quality vaccines for patients worldwide. This presentation will highlight USP’s technical approach for enhancing the quality and safety of medical products on the continent, including strategies for expanding legal frameworks, strengthening active and passive safety surveillance systems, and improving communication and coordination, etc.
Speaker: Comfort Ogar, Senior Pharmacovigilance Manager, USP
Session 1: Advancing pharmacovigilance data-driven decision-making in Africa
Monday, July 22, 11:00 – 11:05 EAT
Data collection and analysis is central to improving patient safety and pharmacovigilance. This requires gathering data from different sources to assess the benefits and risks of medical products throughout their life cycle. In this session, pharmacovigilance experts from across the continent will share their experiences using spontaneously reported data to inform clinical and regulatory decisions and highlight efforts to expand data sources, including the capture and use of real-world data to support benefit-risk assessments and decision-making.
Chairperson: Comfort Ogar, Senior Pharmacovigilance Manager, USP
Oral presentation: Patient reported outcomes of adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination in Nigeria: A mixed methods study
Monday, July 22, 17:40 – 17:50 EAT
Elevating patient voices in pharmacovigilance is critical to improving trust in medicines and medical products and ensuring that public health systems respond to community concerns. Patients report outcomes that are important to them, and sometimes quality of life outcomes rank higher for patients than clinical outcomes. This presentation highlights results from a Nigerian study on patient reported outcomes with COVID-19 vaccines.
Speaker: Comfort Ogar, Senior Pharmacovigilance Manager, USP
Session 6: Active monitoring of medicines/vaccines
Tuesday, July 23, 13:25 – 13:30 EAT
Spontaneous reporting of adverse events helps identify rare and unexpected reactions to medical products and serves as a foundation for pharmacovigilance. However, during health emergencies, regulators often need to make product safety decisions before data has accumulated. At these times, authorities need proactive approaches to collect data. During this session, speakers will highlight how they proactively collected safety data in emergency situations, how pre- and post-marketing safety data can support early decision-making in pharmacovigilance, and what tools can be leveraged for data collection.
Chairperson: Comfort Ogar, Senior Pharmacovigilance Manager, USP
Oral presentation: Leveraging COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring in Ethiopia and Pakistan to enhance system-wide safety surveillance
Tuesday, July 23, 14:30 – 14:40 EAT
In response to COVID-19, Ethiopia and Pakistan strengthened their pharmacovigilance for reporting adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) by collecting, analyzing, and reporting data from health facilities to national authorities and leveraging global and national electronic reporting tools. Specifically, this session will explore how timely AEFI data review and analysis led to prompt recommendations and regulatory actions that are now in place for all vaccines in both countries.
Speaker: Aida Hagos, PQM+ Regional Technical Advisor, USP
View the agenda: https://isopafrica.com/
Not able to join? Follow us @USPGlobalHealth for updates. #ISoPAfricaChapterMeeting