Once a medical treatment hits the market, its safety monitoring depends largely on the public, a reality driving a new Luxembourg campaign to gather more patient reports on side effects.

As part of Med Safety Week 2025, health authorities in Luxembourg are launching a public awareness campaign to strengthen the monitoring of treatment safety by encouraging both patients and healthcare professionals to report side effects.

The initiative, under the slogan "Working together to make treatments safer", aims to create a more complete safety profile for medications. Since clinical trials end once a treatment is marketed, monitoring for rare or long-term side effects depends heavily on real-world reports from users.

"If patients do not report side effects to us, we cannot analyse them", explained Anne-Cécile Vuillemin from the National Health Directorate. "Rare effects, which do not appear during studies, can remain unknown for a long time without us receiving any warning", she noted.

All reported incidents are analysed and cross-referenced with data from other European countries. This collaborative process is crucial for updating medical information leaflets and improving overall treatment safety.

To facilitate reporting, patients are advised to first consult their general practitioner. They can also directly submit information through a dedicated form available on Guichet.lu. "Very soon, this service will also be accessible via MyGuichet, to simplify the process for patients and healthcare professionals", added Vuillemin.

For further details, the public is directed to visit santesecu.lu.

Watch the full report (in Luxembourgish)