Traditional Medicine: Consumers, government and other stakeholders

Based on the growing interest in traditional medicine shown by
consumers, scientists and regulators, three important challenges
present themselves.
• The public and the users of traditional medicine request
safe, quality–controlled and effective remedies.
• Medical scientists request more scientifically sound
evidence before comfortably accepting many traditional
medicine practices. Many health professionals have
doubts about the usefulness of traditional medicine. In
many cases, they require more scientifically–based
evidence if they are to trust its safety and effectiveness.
Meanwhile, the involvement of the academic and
scientific community provides the opportunity to create
more evidence by means of modern science.
• Governments need to establish and update mechanisms
for the regulation of traditional medicine and its
practitioners and, in doing so, require more
scientifically–based evidence to support decision–
making. As traditional systems of medicine become
better documented, and more scientifically credible,
usage is only likely to increase further.
Consumers, of course, have many different reasons for using
traditional medicine, and may not require the same level of evidence
of practice that is espoused by medical scientists. Consumers may
have confidence in, for example, oriental herbal medicine because
of its existence in public hospitals and medical infrastructure in
China, Republic of Korea, and Japan, instituted by centuries of use,
scholarly writings and a formal tertiary education system.
Consumers may also be prepared to try an herbal formula that has
been used and documented in classical medical literature for many
centuries and may be less convinced by a clinical trial of a new drug
– having been applied only to a well–defined sample group.
Consumers’ awareness of these factors may generate more confidence
in terms of ‘evidence behind practice’ than any single
methodologically rigorous clinical trial. However, to the scientist
it’s the latter, and not the former, that represents the stronger evidence.

Source: www.who.int