The Pharmacovigilance Team collaborates with global experts to support safety surveillance monitoring of medicines and vaccines. In this context, the Team as WHO secretariat is tasked to appoint and convene global advisory committees of experts to review and provide guidance on the safety of medicines and vaccines.

The Advisory Committee on Safety of Medicinal Products (ACSoMP) and the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) are independent technical advisory bodies to the Director-General,  World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centres and to the Member States of the WHO, on pharmacovigilance policy and issues of global or regional concern related to the safety of medicines and vaccines respectively. GACVS also assists the WHO’s strategic advisory group of experts (SAGE) for vaccines and immunization, in formulating policies regarding vaccine safety issues, with particular attention to those problems which affect low- and middle-income countries countries.

The roles of the Committees are to provide advice to WHO, including its Collaborating Centre of International Drug Monitoring on safety Issues relating to medicines and vaccines. It guides WHO on general specific issues related to Pharmacovigilance. Terms of Reference specific to both Committees can be found in the dedicated WHO webpages (ACSoMP and GACVS).

In June 2022, WHO convened the first joint meeting with both Committees to provide expert advice on areas of pharmacovigilance that are common across both medicines and vaccines.