Traditional medicine: Where does it stand?

While earth is becoming a smaller village every day, the rapid population growth and ageing is impeding obvious shifting pattern of disease which in turn is inflecting great economic burden required for fast growing health expenditure particularly in the developing world whose suffering from this particular issue is turning into an inflated almost non-curable disease. The major world population today is suffering from poverty and week health status mainly in countries that find it extremely difficult to have proper plans and programs capable of solving such serious dull future. Conventional Medicine with all its astonishing advancements still cannot satisfy public health demands a fact that could be generalized to all societies today but it is of very much concern to mankind in the developing countries. The serious challenges imposed on such societies to maintain reasonable healthy conditions are placing the Traditional Medicine in a very special position where some times willingly or compulsory it is holding a noticeable share in the health care delivery systems, some times officially recognized and some times without any national control socially accepted. Scientists, Policy makers, Health care deliverers, Academies and International Organizations such as WHO are well aware of the great value of Traditional Medicine a matter that has been well reflected in many local and international meetings designed to reflect this fact and one can name few important ones held at the beginning of this century ; “WHO International Symposium on Traditional Medicine, September 11-13, 2000, Japan“ and “The International Consultative Meeting on Global Information on Traditional Medicine, WHO Kobe Center, September 19-21, 2001, Japan” and “The International Seminar on Integration of Traditional Medicine and Modern Medicine, October 12-15, 2002 in Cairo“ and “International Meeting on Global Atlas of Traditional Medicine, Kobe, June 17-19, Japan“. Despite very serious attention paid to Traditional Medicine the fact remains though it is still under estimated, not regulated and misconceived while majority of countries worldwide are not giving it the weight it carries or deserves and not defined in the category of national programs intended for health care delivery systems and social welfare strategies. In addition academic curricula is strongly lacking practical revision of the role of Traditional Medicine in their educational set up to produce manpower capable of utilizing this rather important growing need as a skill required to meet national health needs. Interestingly one can feel a global human desire to replace pure chemical curing agents with natural remedies and treatments a matter that worth emphasizing and demands special attention since we who care to provide satisfactory health care are responsible to respond to the clients wish and needs.