Together with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) recently hosted two international meetings on pharmacovigilance in Brazil, bringing together countries from Latin America and around the globe.

Both meetings provided the opportunity to further integrate post-marketing surveillance activities in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Delegations from 59 countries, including Canada, the United States, Japan, China, Italy and Argentina attended both meetings.

The purpose of the first meeting, the IX International PAHO Meeting of Pharmacovigilance in the Americas, held 8-10 November, was to promote a collaborative environment to strengthen pharmacovigilance regionally. The CEO of Anvisa, Dirceu Barbano, proposed a future in which all regulatory authorities should collaborate on the safety of goods moving internationally. "Health safety is not limited within the borders of countries. We live in a world where goods are moving with increasing speed, "Barbano said.

The second, the 35th Annual WHO Meeting of the countries participating in the Program for International Drug Monitoring, was convened on the role of pharmacovigilance in world trade and ensuring safe and effective medications. These meetings provided an important forum for the discussion of drug safety and were coordinated by the WHO Center for International Drug Monitoring in Uppsala (UMC), located in Sweden.

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