Nigerian quarterly journal of hospital medicine
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Proper and adequate pharmacovigilance is lacking in children's drug therapy, especially in developing countries. Therefore these children are at risk of developing adverse reactions to drugs as a result of medication errors. Having a better understanding of the types of error in a teaching hospital would be an important step toward quality improvement in children drug therapy. ⋯ Children presenting to the LASUTH are at a greater risk of adverse drug reactions from overdosage prescriptions and are also facing the risk of treatment inadequacy and failure from underdosage prescriptions. Therefore a monitoring committee is urgently required to be put in place to review all paediatric prescriptions for appropriateness, adequacy and dosage accuracy using the patient's weight, age, and other appropriate indicator(s) before dispensing and/or refill for paediatric patients. Also rational drug prescription should form part of the monthly continuous medical education of the hospital with much focus on the paediatric doctors.