Below are extracts from a news item in The Lancet.
The implication is that "We have to be hard on traditional medicine in terms of applying scientific rigour and principles... to ensure that treatments are safe, effective, and based on evidence".
What this means in practice is less clear. Treatments of unproven benefit continue to be administered. Research on existing and new traditional and complimentary treatments is often challenging, expensive, and unattractive commercially. One way forward might be for the new WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre to help define which treatments are of proven benefit and how confident one can be of the underlying research (based on high-quality systematic review wherever possible). Users of any treatment should have access to such information to help them decide.
CITATION: WHO's new vision for traditional medicine
Talha Burki. The Lancet (World News) Published: September 02, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)01841-X
Evidence-based integration is the goal of a new WHO global centre and the first global summit on traditional medicine. Talha Burki reports.
From Aug 17 to 18, 2023, WHO hosted the first Traditional Medicine Global Summit. “Throughout history, people in all countries and cultures have used traditional healers, home remedies and ancient medicinal knowledge”, stated WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his opening remarks...
WHO describes traditional medicine as “the total sum of the knowledge, skills and practices indigenous and different cultures have used over time to maintain health and prevent, diagnose and treat physical and mental illness”. It defines complementary medicine as the “broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country's own traditional or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health-care system”...
The global summit was organised by the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre (Jamnagar, Gujarat, India), which was launched last year with the aim of “building a solid evidence base for policies and standards on traditional medicine practices and products”. Shyama Kuruvilla is the lead for the Centre. “Billions of people around the world use traditional and complementary medicines, for many it is their only source of health care”, explained Kuruvilla. “There is a huge workforce involved in traditional and complementary medicine, not just healers but university-accredited practitioners. They can potentially be used to fill the shortfall in health workers and help us move towards universal health care.”...
Kuruvilla stressed that there are plenty of examples from traditional and complementary medicine that do have a solid basis in evidence. 40% of today's pharmaceutical products come from the natural world. Aspirin is derived from willow bark, which has been used as a pain reliever for at least 3500 years. The 2015 Nobel laureate Youtou Tu isolated artemisinin from sweet wormwood, a traditional Chinese medicine. This antimalarial drug has saved millions of lives...
“We have to be hard on traditional medicine in terms of applying scientific rigour and principles”, said Kuruvilla. “It is WHO's responsibility to ensure that what people are using for health and wellbeing is safe, effective, and based on evidence.” ...
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
