WHO holds first traditional medicine summit
By Bintu Jidda kanempress
17 august 2023
The World Health Organization has opened its first two-day Traditional Medicine Global Summit on Thursday, with the group seeking to collect evidence and data to allow for the safe use of such treatments.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as he opened the summit.
“WHO is working to build the evidence and data to inform policies, standards and regulations for the safe, cost-effective and equitable use of traditional medicine”.
Traditional medicine could boost healthcare “access gaps”, but was of value only if used “appropriately, effectively, and above all, safely based on the latest scientific evidence”, Tedros warned earlier.
The two-day WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit takes place alongside a meeting of G20 health ministers in the Indian city of Gandhinagar.
“We need to face a very important real-life fact that traditional medicines are very widely used,” Nobel laureate and Chair of WHO Science Council Harold Varmus told the summit via video link.
“It is important to understand what ingredients are actually in traditional medicines, why they work in some cases… and importantly, we need to understand and identify which traditional medicines don’t work”.
Similarly, the UN health agency in talks with India, described Traditional medicines as a “first port of call for millions of people worldwide”.
The summit, which brings together policymakers and academics, aimed to “mobilise political commitment and evidence-based action” towards them.
The summit, set to become a regular event, follows the opening last year of a WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine, also in India’s Gujarat state.
While traditional medicines are widely used in some parts of the world, its use face criticism.
The UN health agency defines traditional medicine as the knowledge, skills and practices used over time to maintain health and prevent, diagnose and treat physical and mental illness.
Many traditional treatments have no proven scientific value and conservationists say the industry drives a rampant trade in endangered animals including tigers, rhinos and pangolins and threatens the existence of entire species.
