Pharmacovigilance is an integral part of medicine. There is always a risk of side effects when using medication; these can be completely trivial, but there are side effects that can be life-threatening or fatal. Pharmacovigilance practices should prevent such side effects, or at least reduce their incidence, especially by developing preventive measures that are based on adverse drug reaction (ADR) data and the evaluations of these. This article discusses the general concept of pharmacovigilance and compares individual pharmacovigilance systems of several countries and regions.
Keywords: Canada; China; Czech Republic; Great Britain; Japan; adverse drug reaction; legislation; pharmacovigilance.