2023-08-17 16:07:26
Give priority to scientific evidence before starting any alternative medical treatment: this is the watchword of the first World Summit on Traditional Medicine, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO), Thursday August 17, on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 health ministers in Gandhinagar, India.
Traditional medicine can make it possible to fill “access gaps” to health, but only has value if used “appropriately, effectively and, above all, based on the latest sound scientific evidence”, summed up the opening of the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
For fifty years, the UN body has been trying to articulate the cohabitation of traditional medicine, also called “complementary” or “alternative”, with conventional medicine, within the health systems of different countries, particularly in Asia. or in Africa. While alerting to its potential excesses.
Alternative mode of care
The UN agency defines traditional medicine as an alternative mode of care, “sum of knowledge, skills and practices based on theories, beliefs and experiences specific to different cultures, explicable or not, used as much for the maintenance of health as the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical illnesses and mental”.
More concretely, this term can refer to biological therapies promoting the use of natural products derived from plants, such as phytotherapy or aromatherapy, manual practices such as osteopathy, energy medicines or body approaches. -mind, such as hypnosis, meditation or sophrology. According to the WHO, which lists 400 different practices around the world, 80% of the world’s population has already used some form of traditional medicine.
Declaration of Alma-Ata
The WHO addressed the subject of traditional medicine from 1978, during a conference on primary health care. This event gave rise to the Alma-Ata declaration, which defines four types of integration of traditional medicine into conventional health systems: exclusive (only based on conventional medicine), tolerant, inclusive (legal recognition of traditional medicine traditional) and unique (equal articulation between the two types of medicine).
The conference aims to encourage member countries to integrate traditional medicines into their health systems, faced with the boom in the use of these alternative care practices, while providing a legislative framework for their exercise.
National policy
In 2014, the WHO specified its ten-year guidelines on the subject, setting itself two main objectives: Support Member States to take advantage of the potential contribution of traditional and complementary medicine to health » ; et « promote the use of safe and effective traditional and complementary medicine», through regulation of products, practices and practitioners.
Today, of the 170 UN member countries that have reported their use of traditional or complementary medicine since 2018, only 124 have introduced laws or regulations to regulate the use of herbs, and half of them they have a national policy in this area.
No supervision in France
In France, for example, the Order of Physicians recognizes as “therapeutic” only four of these practices, also called “so-called non-conventional care practices” (PSNC): homeopathy, acupuncture, mesotherapy (local injections ) and osteopathy.
However, according to the specialized site The Qdoctor’s daily, 71% of French people have already had recourse to a NSP at least once. In its inventory of June 2023, the order of doctors pointed out the ” therapeutic excesses » potential risks linked to unconventional care practices and called for them to be further regulated, given the absence of a control body in France.
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