WHO Pharmaceuticals Newsletter - N°6, 2006

Overview

This is the last issue for the year. We include regulatory and safety information on medicines, information on some new publications as well as the working group recommendations from the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of Representatives of the National Centres participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring.

In 2006, the Quality Assurance and Safety of Medicines team was kept busy with its prequalification project, standards and normative work for quality pharmaceuticals and pharmacovigilance issues: 44 medicines were 'prequalified'; the fourth edition of the WHO International Pharmacopoeia was published; the INN advisory group for the nomenclature of biologicals was established; the total number of member countries in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring increased to 98; the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence had its thirty-fourth meeting; the International Working Group for Drug Statistics Methodology met twice; numerous training courses were carried out and the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT) was established. These were some of the highlights, all of which are important in our progress towards achieving the millennium development goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).

In the year 2007 the Safety team will continue to focus on public health programmes, with renewed emphasis on capacity building in pharmacovigilance.

We wish all our readers a very happy and fulfilling year in 2007.