Traditional Medicine in Asia

a national association of traditional
practitioners and when the representatives
of such an association can be brought into
direct relationship with the health authorities.
Sri Lanka is the only country where
there is a separate ministry for indigenous
medicine. In India and China, there are
Departments and Bureaus of traditional
medicine within the ministries of health.
Regional and national associations exist in
these countries as well as in most African
countries. All people value good health and
traditional practitioners continue to exist
because people believe in them and their
practices, which have values that are
derived from and are consistent with their
own culture. In most instances, these
practitioners would be willing to participate
in health-promoting activities, provided
they were convinced that they could be
effective and knew how.
All too often, however, the opportunity
to participate has not been afforded them
by the health services, and legislation in
some cases endorses this negative stance.
Experience shows that restrictive legislation
remains unenforceable and people
continue to utilize their traditional systems
of medicine. For example, a restrictive law
forbidding traditional practitioners to issue
certificates in respect of their patients was
repealed in one country. However, it should
be noted that no enabling law has been
introduced in its place, and people continue
to patronize their practitioners. In many
instances, health services are influenced by
technocrats bent on achieving and
maintaining a set of “international medical
standards”. 2 These may not necessarily
reflect nationally acceptable training
curricula that meet local manpower needs,
thus further accentuating the brain drain
of qualified staff.
Traditional medicine is to a large extent
culture-specific and therefore practitioners
Development of training programmes for traditional medicine
tend to stay in their own communities.
Successful attempts to utilize traditional
medicine are characterized by the ability
of health personnel to understand local
traditional practices. China and India are
examples of countries that have developed
their traditional systems of medicine to the
extent that they now command some
respect from practitioners trained in
Western or modern medicine. They have
succeeded in making health personnel
aware of the place of traditional medicine
in their culture, its strengths and weaknesses,
and the use that may be made of it
in formal health care. 3
Education in the classical systems of
medicine such as Chinese traditional
medicine, Ayurveda and Unani, already
includes an appreciable amount of
instruction in Western medicine. In the
case of traditional systems, where remedies
are handed down from generation to
generation by word of mouth, arrangements
have to be made to provide
practitioners with additional knowledge.
Examples include the ability to identify and
encourage existing beneficial practices
(e.g., breastfeeding), as well as competence
in certain modern methods of prevention
and cure (e.g., the care of infants with
diarrhoea or acute respiratory infections).
The creation of a learning situation, where
health personnel actively work with
traditional practitioners and the communities
in identifying health needs, organizing
health care activities, managing their
implementation and evaluating the results
achieved, would also promote a healthier
climate for all. 4
In an ideal situation, personnel of the
formal health system and traditional
practitioners should be encouraged to work
together as teams in clinics and health
centres. Research in traditional medicine
and in the utilization of traditional
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