For the last 3 years from 2005 to 2007, India has not reported a single instance of medicinal side effects from to an international drug monitoring database set up by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally, adverse reactions are believed to be the fourth largest cause of mortality and morbidity, and industry observers believe that more efforts in pharmacovigilance ought to be undertaken by the various stakeholders in Inida to ensure that drug related problems are amply monitored.
The WHO’s Sweden-based Uppsala Monitoring Centre showed that no ADRs were reported from India between 2005 and 2007, a situation which is near impossible given India’s large population base and a massive scale of drug industry.

According to Uppsala’s website (www.who-umc.org), between July 2006 and June 2007, 68 member countries out of 83 pooled adverse reaction case reports into the international database of the WHO programme, taking the total number of stored cases to 3.87 million. India joined the Uppsala monitoring programme since 1998.

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