This week is the Annual Pharmacovigilance Week, organized by Uppsala Monitoring Center and led in Spain by Agencia Española de Medicamentos y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS).

For one week in November, medicine regulators across the globe simultaneously share campaign materials on their social media channels, with the hashtag #MedSafetyWeek. The campaign of this year focuses on polypharmacy (which is defined as five or more medications) and the safe use of medicines in the elderly or those with complex conditions.

It has been published that currently one third of the world’s population over 75 years old take at least six medications per day, and more than one million people consume eight or more.

As a Contract Research Organization part of our work include monitoring clinical studies in which patient have a special conditions (most of them suffer chronic diseases and usually are elderly patients), therefore we need to be aware of this condition can increase the likelihood of suffer adverse drug reactions.

For more detailed information: La AEMPS celebra la #MedSafetyWeek con una campaña para sensibilizar sobre la importancia de notificar las sospechas de reacciones adversas a medicamentos; medsafetyweek