International Symposium on Medicines and Patient Safety: Kigali, Rwanda – 5th November, 2014

Education on how to ensure safe and effective use of medicines is vitally important for patients and health services.
Registration and abstract submission on the themes below is now open for the International Symposium on Medicines and Patient Safety in partnership with Pharmacology for Africa. The symposium will take place on Wednesday 5th November 2014 in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, under the auspices of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Rwanda.
 
The 3 major themes of the symposium are:

• Educating health professionals  in safe and effective use of medicines
• Regulating drugs, including pharmacovigilance and quality of medicines
• Reducing harm from high risk medicines and in patients with high risk conditions

University Hospital, Kigali

Key topics to be discussed and welcome as submitted abstracts include

• education in pharmacology and clinical pharmacology
• developing good prescribing skills
• developing rational treatment guidelines
• drug regulation including quality of medicines
• Drugs and Therapeutics Committees
• medicines for non-communicable diseases
• pharmacovigilance
• safe systems for using medicines for high risk therapeutic areas, including retroviral disease, maternal and paediatric health, cancer, and renal disease
• traditional medicines

This Symposium will be of particular interest to health professionals and policy makers

View over Kigali hills

interested in the safe and effective use of medicines.
These include doctors, pharmacists, nurses and managers working in referral, district and community hospitals, community pharmacists, experts interested in the safe regulation and supply of medicines, health professionals interested in pharmacovigilance, and educators interested in postgraduate and undergraduate training of health professionals in clinical pharmacology, therapeutics and safe dispensing.
The symposium will also be of interest to professionals working in NGOs and patient safety organisations concerned with public health and with disease prevention and treatment.

Pharmacology for Africa

The latest World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology - held in July 2014 in Cape Town - has just ended. Delegates from around the world discussed the latest ideas on research and education about new and established medicines and their effective and safe use.

One of the key threads during the week long meeting was a series of lecture and discussion events hosted by  'Pharmacology for Africa' (PharfA), an initiative by African pharmacologists to promote and

organise pharmacology on the African continent. The keynote 2014 PharfA WCP lecture was given by Professor Alexander Dodoo from Ghana.

This important initiative is recognised and supported by the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR), the umbrella organisation for these 4-yearly congresses on basic and clinical pharmacology.

PharfA aims to secure national and international support to improve capacity and expertise for education and training in Clinical Pharmacology and related disciplines in African medical schools and for post-graduate education in African countries. PharfA also aims to increase research activity and integration across Africa in partnership with African funding and governmental institutions, and with the WHO and other interested overseas organisations.

For more information, see the PharfA website.

Recent and pending PharfAssociated events:
- 5th All Africa Congress on Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (ACP2012) Accra, Ghana -
11-13 July 2012, 
- sessions at WCP - Cape Town 2014
-  All Africa Congress on Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - 2016

Policy, pharmacology and the European Association of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

The EACPT is in a prime position to foster an environment of exchange between research and policy within the field of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics.

The European Association of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) includes all

the national scientific and professional organisations and societies for clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in Europe. It aims to provide educational and scientific support for the more than 4,000 individual professionals interested in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics throughout the European region.

All medicines have risks of adverse effects, in addition to their expected health benefits. The EACPT is very well placed to provide up-to-date briefings and recommendations to policy makers on how pharmacology can contribute positively to human health and wealth, through a clear understanding of the clinical and cost benefit/risk ratio of medicines.

The EACPT is also in a strong position to advise on the support needed for clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, and its underpinning pharmacology, to ensure that established experts and emerging CPT professionals in academia, the clinical domain, governance, industry and other roles can continue to develop and use medicines effectively to meet current and new challenges to human health.

Read the full article

For more information on the Policy Community journal where this article was published please visit www.paneuropeannetworks.com

New treatment targets in the microcirculation

A joint symposium organized by the British Pharmacological Society and the British Microcirculation Society on 'New pharmacological targets in the microcirculation' will take place from 9.30am - 12.30pm on Thursday 19th December 2013.

This is one of the 10 symposia taking planned for Pharmacology 2013 - the next BPS annual winter meeting, to be held Tuesday 17th - Thursday 19th December, 2013  at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London.

The following 5 themes will be addressed during the symposium:

- microcirculation pharmacology and therapeutic targets by Professor Chris Garland, University of Oxford, UK;

- leukocyte trafficking through microvessels: emergence of novel anti-inflammatory therapeutic avenues by Professor Sussan Nourshargh, Queen Mary University of London

- new approaches for modulating retinal angiogenesis by Professor Alan Stitt, Queen’s University Belfast, UK;

- pharmacological approaches for reducing risk of microvascular stroke

syndromes by Professor Donald Singer, University of Warwick, UK

- microvascular targets in oncology by Professor Kristian Pietras, University of Lund, Sweden.

Abstracts are welcome for Pharmacology 2013 on this microcirculation theme, in addition to the wide range of themes relevant to the spectrum of pharmacology from bench to bedside, disease prevention and beyond.

Pharmacology 2013 (formerly the BPS Winter Meeting) attracts around 800 scientists each year, from throughour the UK, from across Europe and from overseas. The meeting includes a selection of topical symposia, plenary lectures, free oral communications and poster sessions which cover the many aspects of pharmacology from basic to clinical science.

Abstracts and registration for Pharmacology 2013 will open in early Autumn 2013.

Microcirculation symposium programme - Thursday 19th December, 2013