The Luxembourg health ministry is participating in MedSafety Week, an annual campaign by the World Health Organisation meant to raise awareness on proper and safe medication consumption.
For this year’s edition, running Monday to 10 November, the campaign focuses on the prevention of side effects, encouraging patients to take medications correctly and report any side effects when they occur.
“The aim is to gain more knowledge about these known side effects and to discover new ones. This knowledge may lead to warnings and changes in the way a drug is used,” the ministry said in a statement Monday.
Also read:More people report adverse effects of drugs in Luxembourg
In the Grand Duchy, the pharmacy and medication division (Division de la pharmacie et des médicaments) and the Regional Pharmacovigilance Centre of Nancy in France are in charge of processing any notifications of side effects.
Starting this year, the ministry named doctors and pharmacists as ambassadors for medication safety, hoping the healthcare professionals will have a wider impact thanks to their proximity to patients. Healthcare providers are legally bound to notify the Luxembourg health department of adverse side effects reported by their patients.
Patients who notice side effects can also scan a QR code on the campaign posters or fill out an online form via myguichet.
In Luxembourg, an increasing number of people report adverse reactions to medication since the covid-19 pandemic took place. While on average 210 cases were reported annually before the pandemic, this number climbed to 2,500 in 2021 – when the Covid-19 vaccine was under particular scrutiny – before decreasing to 525 in 2022.