The 2nd Annual Drug Safety Summit takes place in Abu Dhabi

The event, chaired by Dr Usama B. Abu-Shaban of the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi, kicked off with Dr. Thamir M Alshammari, Director at the The National Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety Center, Vigilance and Crisis Management Executive Directorate at the The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA).

His presentation discussed the SFDA as a model for performing pharmacovigilance activity in the region. He also spoke about a pharmacovigilance campaign of which they do 15-20 per year. They have completed training for over 12,000 healthcare professionals across the various regions in Saudi Arabia.

This was followed by a presentation from Ahmed Alharbi, Senior Specialised Pharmacist, Ministry of Health, Oman who spoke about their Pharmacovigilance programme, understanding the challenges facing medication safety and drafting the future plan for Pharmacovigilance, in Oman including setting up an e-reporting system and patient direct reporting.

The morning was rounded off with an exclusive presentation from Dr. Ola Ghaleb Al Ahdab, Researcher and Pharmacy Consultant and Pharmaceutical Advisor of the Registration and Drug Control Department from the, Ministry of Health, UAE. Her presentation focused on exploring the M.O.H. initiatives to raise the standards of medication safety and describing the continuous improvement model for medication safety.

Dr. Ola also talked about the importance of promoting patient safety and the possibility of the Emirates I.D. being used in the future to record important medical information about patients.

"If key information about a patient could be available electonically, patients would be able to seek treatment in any Emirate in the future and important medical details could be viewed by doctors," noted Dr. Ola.

Following her presentaion on day two was Amjad Aziz Mahmood, Head of Pharmacovigilance Center at the Ministry of Health in Iraq who presented Iraq's experience in establishing a pharmacovigilance system and reviewing the work plan for the Iraqi pharmacovigilance center in public health facilities.

He also took the time to talk about discovering future workplans in the private sector and the community as a whole. His presentation was followed by other insightful talks about how technologies can enhance medication safety and medication management and their challenges. These insights were presented by representatives from Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Corniche Hospital, Al Rahba Hospital, Al Mafraq Hospital and American Hospital Dubai.

The day and the summit ended with the chair, Dr Usama B. Abu-Shaban of the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi, addressing the audience of healthcare professionals to talk about the Jawda programme, a tool to improve the quality of pharma care and reviewing its results as well as stakeholder feedback.

Ashley Phillips, Conference Director concluded, "With two days of in-depth presentations and interactive discussions from across the MENA region, this event provided attendees with the perfect opportunity to improve drug safety processes and find out about updates in regulation, technology and medical management. Challenges were discussed and it was great to see the various MENA countries coming together to discuss solutions."