The WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005 was launched at the World Health Assembly, receiving wide coverage in the international press. It aims to promote development of national traditional and complementary medicine (TM/CM) policies and programmes, improve the safety, efficacy and quality of TM/CM by expanding the knowledge base on TM/CM, and provide guidance on regulatory and quality assurance standards. Traditional Medicine in Asia (SEARO Regional Publication No. 39), published in 2002, complements the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy by exploring policy issues such as harmonization of traditional and modern medicine, the role of TM in national health care systems, cost-benefit analysis and training programmes.

In the African and Western Pacific Regions, regional TM strategies are already guiding Member States on regional TM issues. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region, a WHO Regional Committee resolution was passed in 2002, calling on Member States to adopt the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005 as a framework for developing national TM programmes.

Tools for institutionalizing traditional medicine

In the African Region, several tools for institutionalizing TM were developed, including:

• guidelines for formulating a national master plan for developing TM
• a tool to help countries document the status of African TM
• guidelines for documenting ethnomedical evidence data
• guidelines for registering traditional medicines in the African Region, as part of an effort to accelerate the registration and circulation of standardized African traditional medicines within the African Region.

Regulating herbal medicines

The global WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy indicates that rapidly increasing use of herbal medicines throughout the world has made regulation of herbal medicines an urgent issue. A series of workshops - for Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe and South-East Asia - was therefore launched to help drug regulatory authorities develop the expertise required for regulating herbal medicines. The first workshop was held in Teheran in December, for Eastern Mediterranean countries. The aim is to familiarize national drug regulatory authorities with the principal policy, safety and quality control issues regarding regulation and registration of herbal products, including development and implementation of national regulations. The workshops will also work towards development of common regional requirements for registration of herbal medicines.

Even in China, the number of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals, beds and research institutions is soaring

Source: Traditional Medicine in Asia. New Delhi, WHO, 2002 (SEARO Regional Publication No. 39).

In the Western Pacific Region, such harmonization is in fact already under way. The first meeting of the Western Pacific Region Forum for the Harmonization of Herbal Medicine was held in March 2002. It drew up a work plan to deal with: harmonization of nomenclature for herbal medicines; harmonization of methods and guidelines for the registration and regulation of herbal medicines; harmonization of agricultural and field collection practice procedures; and communication of information on herbal medicine regulation.