AIFA joins this year's #MedSafetyWeek, the global campaign that aims to raise awareness among patients and healthcare professionals about the importance of reporting suspected drug side effects, using its official channels (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube) to disseminate shared materials internationally.

The seventh annual #MedSafetyWeek is running until 13 November to encourage everyone to report suspected side effects of medicines. This year’s global campaign involves medicines regulators from 81 countries and focuses on the key role of every healthcare professional, patient, and carer who reports a suspected side effect and contributes to using medicines safely.

All medicines may cause side effects in some patients, so there are steps in place to continuously monitor their safety after they are placed on the market. The purpose of safety monitoring is to gain more information about known side effects and find out about new ones. Regulators operate systems to detect and analyse those side effects and prevent harm to future patients.

Every report made by a patient, a healthcare professional, or a carer plays a key role in gaining more knowledge about the benefits and risks of medicines in clinical use and allows action to be taken to minimise risks.

Reporting suspected side effects helps to improve the safety of medicines for all patients and, in some cases, can result in better tailored prescribing advice, which can improve patient outcomes.

Anyone can report suspected side effects to the AIFA. You can submit a report according to the instructions available in "Related links".