The Ministry of Health (MOH) and other key stakeholders in Vietnam are strengthening the pharmacovigilance (PV) system in their country. A major step was taken when the National Drug Information and Adverse Drug Reaction (DI&ADR) Center was established at the Hanoi University of Pharmacy (HUP) in 2009. Management Sciences for Health’s Strengthening Pharmaceutical Systems (SPS) Program and its predecessor, Rational Pharmaceutical Management Plus (RPM Plus) Program, have collaborated with the national stakeholders to support this process, particularly focusing on activities that strengthen broader pharmacovigilance systems. RPM Plus provided technical assistance to hold a consensus meeting which developed a pharmacovigilance framework for Vietnam that included active surveillance as a key element. It also supported training-of-trainers on pharmacovigilance for staff members from public health programs and other key local stakeholders.
The SPS Program built on these efforts and provided further technical support to HUP, DI&ADR Center, and the Vietnam Administration of AIDS Control (VAAC) in carrying out the following activities —
- Training DI&ADR center staff on drug information and pharmacovigilance, including development of standard operating procedures, question-answer forms for drug information service, and revision of the spontaneous reporting form.
- Developing a framework and protocol for sentinel site-based pilot active surveillance pharmacovigilance within the antiretroviral therapy program.
- Including a pharmacovigilance component in the Global Fund Round 10 application. The World Health Organization (WHO) and SPS provided technical assistance to the national counterparts in conceptualizing and developing this component.
- A Training and Workshop on Strengthening the Network for Safety of Medicines and Pharmacovigilance in Vietnam. SPS collaborated with WHO and the University of Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France) to provide technical support to MOH/HUP/DI&ADR Center to conduct this event.
SPS is currently collaborating with the DI&ADR Center to help review HUP curriculum and recommend changes to appropriately address pharmacovigilance and medicine safety topics.
SPS is also collaborating with Vietnam’s National Tuberculosis Control Program and other national stakeholders to help strengthen their system for referring, reporting, and transporting tuberculosis (TB) laboratory specimens for diagnosis and management of multidrug-resistant TB.
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