06 Sep 2020

Health and wellness assistant minister, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe, has commended Orapa mine hospital for serving the community and partnering with Botswana Medical Regulatory Authority (BoMRA) to promote health and safety.

He applauded Debswana’s continuous commitment to community health care initiatives and provision of health services in the Boteti region.

He was officiating at an event to sign Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Orapa mine hospital and BoMRA as well as launch a drug monitoring centre in Orapa on September 3.

Mr Lelatisitswe said even though medication was meant to heal the sick, there were instances when they inflicted undesired effects.

He noted that as part of its strategy in building national pharmaco-vigilance (PV) programme, BoMRA promoted reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADR) by healthcare professionals through innovative reporting methods.

To that extent, Mr Lelatisitswe said the authority had to date established ADR monitoring centres at 12 hospitals nationwide.

Mr Lelatisitswe stated that the centres would strengthen the authority’s efforts in PV advocacy, awareness and training.

He emphasised that the Ministry of Health and Wellness was committed to providing quality health care services and ADR monitoring centres.

He said the activities would also educate, train and promote safe use of all medicines and related products among public and private health care sectors in the region.

Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa Mines (OLDM),  acting general manager, Mr Ditiro Lentswe, stated that signing of the MoU was the beginning of a long term partnership, which would help strengthen patient safety.

“We are proud that Orapa mine Hospital is the first centre to be launched for the purpose of reporting to BoMRA any adverse drug reactions that patients could experience when they take any prescribed medication,” said Mr Lentswe.

The signing of MoU, he said, was not only an example of the power of partnerships, but of the standing commitment from Orapa mine hospital to national medicines safety monitoring.

In addition, Mr Lentswe stated that the hospital would continue to leverage its partnership with BoMRA to complement and fully utilise each other’s comparative advantage for the benefit of the community

BoMRA director of Pharmaco vigilance and clinical trials, Dr Parthasarathi Gurumurthy, stated that establishing the safety of medicine among the population of Botswana post authorisation surveillance for both safety and quality was essential.

Dr Gurumurthy indicated that BoMRA had conducted outreach programmes sensitising health care professionals on the need to monitor patients for adverse effects of medicines, adding that ADR reporting also raised awareness on drug induced illness.

He noted that BoMRA had introduced various platforms for reporting of ADRs.

“The reporting tools had yielded positive results. To date, more than 350 ADRs cases have been reported to BoMRA in the past nine months,” said Dr Gurumurthy.

For his part, BoMRA chief executive officer, Dr Stephen Ghanie stated that the authority was mandated to ensure that all medicines and related substances used in Botswana were in conformity with established criteria of quality, safety and efficacy. ENDS