THE National Medicines Organization (EOF) is one of 107 organizations participating in the ninth annual global campaign MedSafetyWeek2024which starts today, Monday 4 November, and will run until Sunday 10 November, with the aim of raising awareness and informing the public and healthcare professionals about ways to make the use of medicines safer.

This year the campaign focuses on the importance of the correct way of using medicines to drastically reduce the chances of side effects and on the importance of reporting side effects when they occur, as it helps to make medicines safer for everyone.

Research shows that about half of all side effects are preventable.

The correct use of medicines is an essential condition for the safety of users. The EOF reminds patients to take their medicines according to the instructions given to them and to doctors to evaluate/re-evaluate each patient’s treatment before each prescription.

“It is often thought that only scientists or health professionals can make medicines safer. However, the patient, as a drug user, also plays a crucial role: Every time he reports a suspected side effect to the EOF (https://www.kitrinikarta.gr/), to the doctor or the pharmacist, it helps to increase the information about known side effects or even discover new ones. This leads to warnings and changes in the instructions for the use of medicines, so that they are used by everyone in a safer way”, states the EOF.

Every citizen, patient and health professional can support the MedSafetyWeek2024 week by disseminating, in any appropriate way, the material that will be posted daily in the Greek language by the EOF. In order to increase the reach of the campaign through social media, EOF requests the use of the hashtags #MedSafetyWeek and #EOFkitrinikarta.