The HPRA published its 2021 annual report on 14 October detailing its activities to regulate medicines, devices and other health products for the benefit of people and animals. Key activity that may be of interest to you within the report include:

• The HPRA received 25,622 suspected adverse reaction reports for human medicines (2020: 7,752), of which 17,946 were associated with the use of COVID-19 vaccines. The HPRA also received 439 reports of suspected adverse reactions associated with the use of veterinary medicines (2020: 391).
• 1,604,589 dosage units of falsified and other illegal medicines were detained (2020: 1,610,295). Products detained included sedatives, erectile dysfunction medicines and analgesics.

Quality defects pertaining to 2,033 medicines for human use were reported or identified in 2021. This represented a 44% increase over the 2020 figure. Most quality defect reports (39%) were submitted by pharmacists, mainly through the HPRA online reporting portal. This was a significant increase on 2020, when 20% of reports were received from pharmacists