TRADITIONAL MEDICINE - ACCESS

First Global WHO 

Traditional Medicine Strategy

ACCESS

Statistics demonstrate overwhelmingly that it is the world’s poorest countries who are most in need of inexpensive, effective treatments for communicable diseases.

At the same time, access to modern essential chemical drugs is lowest where people are suffering most from communicable diseases.

The reasons are well known and include inadequate financing and poor health care delivery. In developing countries, however, TM can be comparatively inexpensive.

Additionally, TM practitioners may be widely trusted and respected providers of health care, albeit not necessarily officially recognized.

If access to TM is to be increased to help improve health status in developing countries, however, several problems must be tackled.

                 Firstly, reliable standard indicators to accurately measure levels of access — both financial and geographic —to TM must be developed.

Qualitative research to help identify constraints to extending access should also be undertaken.

                Secondly, the safest and most effective TM therapies must be identified, to provide a sound basis for efforts to promote TM.

The focus should be on treatments for diseases that represent the greatest burden for poor populations. This means focusing on the development of antimalarials, and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.

Evidently, increasing access to safe and effective TM should not mean displacing

programmes to increase access to allopathic medicine.

Rather opportunities to improve cooperation between TM practitioners and allopathic medicine practitioners, should be created, to enable patients to draw upon both TM and allopathic therapies to best meet their needs.

This is of course the case everywhere (and applies also to CAM).

But it is particularly relevant in areas with poor access to allopathic medicine.

Fortunately, in these areas, TM practitioners tend to be well established and well respected.

Working with these practitioners can facilitate effective dissemination of important health messages to communities, as well as promotion of safe TM practices.

If access to TM is to be increased sustainably, the natural resource base upon which it often depends must be sustained. 

Raw materials for herbal medicines, for instance, are often collected from wild plant populations.

Over-harvesting due to intensified local use or to meet export demand is a growing problem.

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2002/WHO_EDM_TRM_2002.1.pdf