Prevalence and Extent of Adverse Drug Reactions in Sudanese Patients in Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy Regimens

Generally the data on adverse reactions to drugs treatment have been recorded in clinical trials, post-marketing analyses and anecdotal reports; however such data are available only in well developed countries and it might not be an up-to-date. The Thalidomide tragedy around 1962 which resulted in the birth of more than 10,000 malformed children by women who took the drug at the early stage of pregnancy had led to greater attention and focus, both nationally and internationally, on drug safety issues [1]. Then, the sixteenth World Health Assembly on 1963 highlighted the urgent need for action to rapid dissemination of information on Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs), led to the World Health Organization (WHO) International Drug Monitoring Project in 1968. At the same time, spontaneous systems for the reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) were established in some well developed countries. The major purposes of these systems are to detect unknown or poorly understood adverse effects of medicines [2, 3].