WHO and Tradition Medicine

 

Opinion

The world health organization for more than fifty years has been dedicating itself to the questions of Traditional Medicine and defines Traditional Medicine as the “sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness” [1].

According to Dr. Anton & Suriya [2], the greatest revolution in international health policy was born in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, in the Soviet Union under the slogan “Health for All Not Year 2000”. Preceded by a series of meetings which having as theme the PHC, primary health care, in Alma-Ata, in 1962, there was an WHO International Health Conference. As a consequence of this meeting, the Institute of Alternative Medicine was created and one declaration was elaborated with a focus on PHC, according to Dr. Jayasuriya [2]. There was a second conference in Alma-Ata in 1978, centered on the same theme. According to Alma-Ata Declaration [3], PHC “relies, at local and referral levels, on health workers, including physicians, nurses, midwives, auxiliaries and community workers as applicable, as well as traditional practitioners as needed, suitably trained socially and technically to work as a health team”. PHC is a “people-centred, holistic approach to health that makes prevention as important as cure”, according to WHO former Director-General Dr. Margaret [4].

David Hruodbeorth