Luxembourg's Ministry of Health has confirmed that it is participating in #MedSafetyWeek 2022, a global week to raise awareness about medicine safety, which runs from 7 to 13 November 2022.
Initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), this global campaign aims to raise public awareness of the safety and proper use of medicines.
All medicines can cause side effects. This is why measures are in place to monitor their security. Any person (patient or healthcare professional) can report a suspected adverse reaction to the competent authorities. The goal of safety monitoring is to get more information about known side effects and to discover new ones. By reporting adverse effects suspected of being linked to a medication, everyone participates in the identification of medicine safety problems, so that the necessary measures are put in place, and to protect the population as well as possible.
Luxembourg's Health Ministry also recalled that side effects related to medication can be reported to one's general practitioner (GP) or pharmacist. In addition, patients can report side effects themselves by completing the form available on the Guichet.lu website: www.guichet.lu/pharmacovigilance.
In Luxembourg, reports of side effects are processed by two institutions: the pharmacy and medicines division of the Health Directorate and the Regional Pharmacovigilance Centre (Centre régional de pharmacovigilance) in Nancy, France.
For #MedSafetyWeek 2022, the Health Directorate has chosen pharmacists from Luxembourg as ambassadors for medicine safety in order to support this awareness campaign.
Luxembourg's Minister of Health, Paulette Lenert, stated: "In order to make medicine-related use safer, we encourage patients as well as health professionals to participate actively by declaring any adverse effects linked to taking a medication". Each declaration makes it possible to collect more information on the use of this medicine. Consequently, if a new risk appears after taking a medication, the public authorities can decide to modify its use in order to ensure patient safety.
For more information concerning the reporting of side effects, the Health Ministry has advised members of the public to speak to their GP or pharmacist.
