The South East European Centre for Surveillance and Control of Infectious Diseases – SECID, SEEHN RHDC in collaboration with WHO Regional Office for Europe, the Centers of Disease Control, USA and Task Force for Global Health has convened an advanced training workshop on surveillance and causality assessment of adverse events following immunization (AEFI), held in Tirana, Albania in the period 30th November – 2nd December 2022.
SEEHN Secretariat Director, Dr Mira Jovanovski Dasic addressed the audience online. Her message focused on the importance of the topic discussed and also cross-regional collaboration that is important to be kept especially view the immunisation sensitivity.
With the participation of lecturers in person and remotely from WHO Regional Office for Europe, Canada, Germany, Estonia, Serbia, US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and Uppsala Monitoring Center, during this very intense 3 days training brought great interest and a lot of discussion on the table.
The aim of the workshop was to provide guidance and technical advice to national experts from the Southern-eastern Europe Health Network Member States and guests on strengthening surveillance and causality assessment of AEFIs, by updating the national policies procedures and tools on surveillance of AEFIs to further strengthen the national mechanisms to detect, respond, assess causality and communicate effectively on serious adverse events following immunization.
Participants committed to improve their AEFI systems and causality assessments. By the end of the workshop they came up with a draft plan for actions on improving their systems engaging drugs regulators, immunization programs and other national stakeholders.
In addition, multiple cross-cutting issues were identified so that they can be addressed at regional level.
The workshop was attended by about 50 participants consisting of national experts involved in surveillance and review of AEFI cases representing national immunization programs; pharmacovigilance units of national drug regulatory authorities; representatives of the national expert committee involved in assessing the causes and classification of AEFIs; representatives of medical universities, responsible for graduate and post-graduate educational programs on pharmacovigilance and AEFI surveillance in the country. #immunization #seehn #southeasteuropeancountries #vaccine
