Analysis of Passive Surveillance Data Collected by the Swaziland Pharmacovigilance Unit, October 2016-March 2017

With support from SIAPS, the Swaziland National Pharmacovigilance Unit (NPVU) has been monitoring the safety of medicines used in the county by collecting and collating reports of adverse drug reactions (ADR) and other medicine-related problems through its spontaneous reporting system established under the country’s Ministry of Health in 2009. In addition, SIAPS has been supporting active surveillance for ARV and TB medicines. ADRs and other medicine-related problems are reported to the NPVU by health care providers using a paper ADR reporting form. Completed forms are sent to the NPVU or collected from health care facilities on a quarterly basis for data entry and analysis. SIAPS supports the collection of the forms and has seconded a data clerk to the NPVU to enter the data from the forms into Microsoft Excel. SIAPS support was further sought to analyze PV data and build the capacity of the PV team to undertake routine analysis of those data. The main objective of the work was to analyze PV data generated from the spontaneous reporting system in Swaziland to inform clinical practice (rational medicine use) and improve patient outcomes.