A critical and comprehensive review on toxicovigilance

Abstract

Toxicovigilance is the active process of identifying and evaluating the toxic risks existing in a community and evaluating the measures taken to reduce or eliminate them. It should be viewed as a useful complement to prevent poisoning. The section serves to enhance epidemiological surveillance for identification of poisoning/risk of poisoning in the community, the substances, circumstances, and the population involved in and to strengthen investigation of poisoning incidences of public health significance so as to implement control measures in a timely manner. Data mining of large databases, such as those of poison centers, can be extremely helpful by triggering signals for health authorities. So far, very few countries have set up structured toxicovigilance systems and it is anticipated that in future, national and international initiatives will help bridging this gap in our knowledge of the toxicity of many chemicals and commercial products to human beings.