Selling Safety: How I Pitched Pharmacovigilance to Business Leaders in Uganda

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Last month, I had the privilege of speaking at the inaugural Pharmaceutical Importation for Profit Symposium 2026 in Uganda. The symposium was convened by RentMyMBA, a consulting firm for pharmaceutical and healthcare enterprises. I was invited to deliver a practical session entitled, Ensuring Medicine Safety During and After Importation: Common Issues and How to Avoid Them.

In the weeks leading up to the symposium, I kept mulling over how best to talk about pharmacovigilance (PV) to business leaders in the pharmaceutical importation space. My eureka moment came when I realised the answer was right there in the name of the symposium: present PV as something that can help businesses make more profit. Because let’s face it, the language business leaders understand best is profit and loss. To secure their buy-in, I needed to make PV less abstract by framing it in terms of its financial impact.

I was the last speaker of the day, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. All the speakers before me had highlighted PV in their presentations, effectively laying the groundwork for my session. They introduced PV as an emerging regulatory requirement that businesses need to be aware of and start complying with. One of the speakers even talked about the thalidomide tragedy, the watershed moment in the history of PV. By the time I faced the audience, a picture had already been painted of the harrowing scenes of babies born with missing or severely shortened limbs in the 1950s and 1960s.

I began my talk by building on the previous speakers’ references to PV. I took the audience through the evolution of pharmacovigilance in Uganda, starting with the enactment of the National Drug Policy and Authority Act in 1993, which created the National Drug Authority, the regulatory agency mandated to ensure the safety of medicines in Uganda. Uganda joined the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring (PIDM) in 2007, leading to the establishment of the National PV Centre to coordinate PV activities across the country. Most recently, in May this year, the National Drug and Health Products Authority Act, 2026 was gazetted. For the first time, section 51(1) explicitly requires manufacturers, distributors, and importers of drugs to establish a pharmacovigilance system. I was candid with importers in the audience that this is now a legal obligation. The same requirement applies to those importing unregistered products that do not have Marketing Authorisation Holders (MAHs) in Uganda.

The next part of my talk focused on the relationship between importers and MAHs. I introduced the audience to the Pharmacovigilance Agreement (PVA), which defines the respective responsibilities of the two entities in conducting local PV activities. These responsibilities include safety reporting, training, and MAH-led audits of distributors, among others. I encouraged business leaders to actively pursue PVAs alongside their commercial agreements. They ought to negotiate PVAs that enable them to leverage the MAHs’ pharmacovigilance resources like training and funding to support local PV activities. I also emphasized that failure to comply with the terms of a PVA could put their distributorship agreements with MAHs at risk.

I then made the business case for PV, describing it not as a cost centre but as a risk protector. Businesses often treat PV as little more than a check-box activity that drains resources. Instead, I presented it as a business support function that can protect revenue and even increase profit margins. If a company’s products become unsafe, its revenue can disappear in a flash. Effective PV can also strengthen trust between a business and its customers. I told the audience that if their medical representatives proactively ask prescribers about any safety issues associated with their products, they are more likely to earn their trust. It would demonstrate that theirs is a business that not only cares about selling products, but one that is also genuinely committed to patient and medicine safety.

I concluded my talk by emphasising the collaborative nature of PV and the equally important roles that importers and distributors play. Their position within the PV ecosystem is unique because they interface directly with healthcare professionals (HCPs). As such, they have a responsibility to collect and report all suspected adverse effects and medicines-related problems to the NDA and/or their MAHs. They also play a vital role in communicating medicine safety information to HCPs and the public. I encouraged them to not only talk about how good their products are, but also about how safely patients and prescribers can use them.

As I stepped off the stage, I reflected on how far the conversation around PV in Uganda has come. What was once viewed purely as a compliance burden is increasingly being recognised by importers and distributors as good business sense — a function that protects revenue, builds trust with prescribers, and safeguards the very reputation on which businesses depend. What was once a grudging cost is starting to be seen as an investment. Symposiums like this one are proof that the message is landing.

I had already been reassured by the speakers before me talking about PV, and by the fact that RentMyMBA had included the subject in the programme at all, yet in between breaks, I found it was even more encouraging to discover that one importer, Acculife Pharma Ltd, has already appointed a QPPV and is actively developing its PV systems. These are clear signs that the advocacy work we are doing in PV is bearing fruit. People are listening, and they are taking PV seriously.

My hope is that more importers will follow Acculife Pharma’s example and begin building their PV systems proactively, rather than waiting for enforcement to catch up with the law. The National Drug and Health Products Authority Act, 2026 has given PV real legal teeth, but lasting compliance will come from businesses genuinely believing pharmacovigilance protects their bottom line — not just from fear of penalty. If that shift in mindset continues, Uganda’s pharmaceutical importation sector stands to become not only more profitable, but genuinely safer for the patients it serves.

Written by

Odokonyero Kennedy

Pharmacist, Global Shaper at Kampala Hub and student of Msc. Pharmaceuticals and Health Supplies Management at Makerere University. [email protected]

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