The Belize government has welcomed the decision of the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide full members to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country in its International Drug Monitoring (WHO PIDM).
‘This milestone recognizes the significant progress made in strengthening Belize’s national pharmacovigilance system and its capacity to respond to medicine-related safety concerns,’ the government said in a statement. It said that a key part of this achievement was the successful connection of Belize’s national reporting systems with the WHO global database for adverse event reports. It said this was supported through close collaboration between the Drug Inspectorate Unit and the Maternal and Child Health Unit, strengthening Belize’s ability to contribute national safety information to global monitoring efforts.
Last month, the WHO said that Belize had been officially included as a full member of its PIDM and that it reflects years of sustained work by the Ministry of Health and Wellness of Belize to strengthen its national pharmacovigilance system, regulatory oversight, and post-marketing surveillance of medical products.
Belize initially joined the PIDM as an Associate Member in 2020 and the WHO said that full membership in the PIDM recognizes Belize’s growing capacity to detect, assess, understand, and prevent adverse effects or other medicine-related problems, while contributing data and expertise to the global network coordinated by the WHO and the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC).
The WHO said that as a full member of the PIDM, Belize will have greater opportunities to collaborate with countries around the world, access international analyses and safety information, and contribute to the global detection of medicine-related risks.
In its statement, the government said that the membership will allow Belize to contribute more actively to international medicines safety monitoring and access global safety information to better protect patients.
It noted the dediccation of the teams and healthcare professionals who contributed to the achievement adding ‘this accomplishment reflects the Government of Belize’s commitment to strengthening the country’s systems that help ensure medicines and other medical products available to the public are safe and of acceptable quality’.