SURVEY OF PHARMACOVIGILANCE AMONG PHARMACISTS IN IBADAN METROPOLIS, NIGERIA

Abstract

The uses of drugs by human beings have known and unknown undesirable effects that can be identified through post marketing-surveillance. A National Pharmacovigilance programme is currently being coordinated by the National pharmacovigilance (Drug Safety Monitoring) centre of the National Agency for Food and Drug, Administration and Control (NAFDAC). A total of 143 pharmacists were interviewed, with the aid of a self administered questionnaire. They comprised of pharmacists working in the University College Hospital, Oyo state owned secondary health facilities community pharmacists in Ibadan and industrial pharmacists (medical representatives) working in Ibadan. The data was entered into a computer for analysis using the SPSS version 15.0 statistical package. Respondents were scored for knowledge assessment. Means and medians were determined as measures of central tendencies. Chi square was used to test for association between variables. The respondents comprised 84(58.7%) males and 59(41.3%) females. Pharmacists in the University College hospital were 33 (23.1 %), those in the secondary health facilities were 30(21.0%), the community pharmacists were 43(30.l %) and the industrial pharmacists were 37 (25.9%). The mean age of the respondents was 37.2±9.7years. Most pharmacists (88.1 %) have observed an adverse drug reaction (ADR) before but only 45.5% had reported it. The mean score of the pharmacists on knowledge was 7.6 ±2.4. The pharmacists working in the tertiary health facility being most knowledgeable followed by the industrial pharmacists, then the community pharmacists and least among the pharmacists working in the secondary health facilities. Texts on drugs and therapies were the commonest source of information for pharmacists on adverse drug reactions. The commonly identified reasons for not reporting observed suspected ADRs among those who had never reported observed ADRs were ignorance of reporting procedures (80.8%). uncertainty that reaction was due to the drug ingested (69.2%), lack of knowledge of the reporting forms (61.5%), and pharmacists not sure of the type of reactions to be reported (60.3%). Conclusion: The study revealed that pharmacists had poor knowledge of ADRs and there was a fairly high level of observation of ADRs, but the rate of reporting was low. The national pharmacovigilance center should improve efforts at enhancing reporting of ADRs through seminars, workshops and training, while also making the forms for reporting readily available and accessible.