WHO Programme - Global Monitoring.

The article presents information on the World Health Organisation (WHO) programme. The programme was established in 1968 as a pilot project with the participation of 10 countries that had organised national pharmacovigilance systems at that time. The intent was to develop international collaboration to make it easier to detect rare adverse drug reactions not revealed during clinical trials. The database of the WHO Programme is a unique reference source used in many different situations. When a national centre receives the first report of an unfamiliar drug-reaction association the WHO database is often consulted to find out whether a similar observation has been made elsewhere in the world.