#46 Protecting the health ecosystem – Valentina Giunchi & Joe Mitchell

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Pharmacovigilance has traditionally focused on the patient at the receiving end of a medicine. But what happens to medicines once they leave the body? In this episode, Valentina Giunchi and Joe Mitchell unpack the emerging field of ecopharmacovigilance and explore how the One Health approach is reshaping the way we think about medicine safety across human, animal, and environmental systems. 

Tune in to find out:

• Where in the environment pharmaceutical residues are turning up, and why this should be on every pharmacovigilance scientist's radar
• How the dramatic collapse of India's vulture populations in the early 2000s speaks to the importance of the One Health approach 
• Practical solutions, from smarter prescribing and greener pharmaceuticals to take-back schemes for unused medicines, that can help curb pharmaceutical pollution.

Want to know more?

For a deep dive into ecopharmacovigilance, the following references provide foundational information on the topic in pharmacovigilance, most of them penned by Professor Giampaolo Velo, who coined the term:

• The revised Erice declaration for the inclusion of environmental issues in pharmacovigilance
• A book chapter on ecopharmacovigilance in the 2017 SpringerLink book “Pharmacovigilance”, featuring our very own Ralph Edwards and Marie Lindquist as editors
• A paper summarising the main concepts in ecopharmacovigilance and pharmaceutical pollution

A paper with Valentina Giunchi as a co-author on environmental sustainability as an essential component of rational medicine use.

A recent paper with Joe Mitchell as a co-author, using the One Health approach to investigate pharmacovigilance database reports on antimicrobial resistance. 

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