The Vaccines and Medicines Observatory

What we know

Safety surveillance at post-marketing or Post-authorization is very important and critical as it gives the much-needed definition and characterization of vaccine and medication safety profiles. This safety surveillance covers reactions that are not studied during clinical trials like those occurring in subpopulations that were not included in trials (like pregnant women, children, the elderly) and adverse reactions with delayed onset or are rare or uncommon in nature.

In Uganda, adverse events are primarily monitored through a passive system that relies on healthcare providers waiting for caretakers or the patients reporting any adverse events. This is highly dependent on the patient actually going to the health facility, informing the health worker about the adverse event(s), and the health worker actually reporting to the regulators using the available means. This usually suffers from a variety of bottlenecks related to the patient, health worker, and the health system leading to notoriously poor reporting rates and culture.

During pandemics and mass vaccination campaigns, large numbers of people are quickly vaccinated. Coincidental adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) can derail the implementation of vaccination programs. It is therefore essential to have rigorous, rapid, and credible safety surveillance and risk assessment mechanisms. This calls for more robust, adaptable, and timely approaches to monitoring AEFI and administration of medication or surgeries.

Solutions

The UgVacSafety is an initiative for active monitoring of vaccine safety using automated SMS technology that empowers vaccine recipients to report their experience after receiving a vaccine using any phone.

Our goal is UgVacSafety to become a leading enabler that significantly improves monitoring, detecting, and responding to vaccine safety needs working in collaboration with immunization providers, the private sector, research institutions, the ministry of health (NDA and EPI), and other stakeholders.

We have experience from the active follow-up of children that were immunized with Measles-Rubella and Polio vaccines during the 2019 mass vaccination campaigns at health centers and schools.

We set up the SMS reminder Mobile APP that sends an SMS to caretakers of children receiving routine vaccines at a primary health care facility to remind them about their upcoming and scheduled vaccine appointments.