Traditional Medicine. The focus of the WHO

The World Health Organization has bet, at least in part, by the Tradition. Recently presented a strategy for the next three years by which goes to supporting traditional medicines around the globe

When something is just necessary to implement it. Herman Hesse

Senior citizens known indigenous traditional remedies and the best use of medicinal plants, a knowledge that large pharmaceutical corporations want to despoil their own benefit.

Allopathic medicine is relatively new in the history of mankind. Other medical formulas and / or health, however, such as Ayurveda (India) and Chinese acupuncture, for example, have centuries of tradition. States, international institutions, pharmaceutical companies and scientists have for decades vilified natural therapies with the aim of making health in a global market for medical tecnoindustria. However, regardless of how they perform now discuss the plan, WHO is (in part) to gamble on the tradition and has begun to speak up for the defense of traditional medicine in view of its success.

WHO has publicly presented a strategy (1) whose objective is from now until 2005, supporting traditional medicines in all corners of the globe. According to officials of the international institution will be supported Tradition medicines, alternative, complementary and / or natural. WHO will support research on the proven effectiveness of these therapies and become an advocate for the regulation of such medical formulas. To do so, mediate with indigenous administrations for these natural systems are allowed in the public health system.

BIOPIRACY

One of the biggest problems plaguing traditional medicines is biopiracy leading the big pharmaceutical companies. What the tecnoindustria called "life sciences" are, in fact, double glass mirrors which serve as an excuse to privatize and plunder traditional knowledge. Tecnofarmacéuticas companies claim, as happened in the case of conventional wisdom about the properties of the neem tree (India), depriving indigenous people of ancient habits to bring that wisdom into manufactured products fed profitable for the West. Makers themselves according to WHO, this initiative aims to protect low cultures, and also prevent the disappearance of medicinal plants of great help to human health. In this regard it is noteworthy that there is already an international protocol that ensures the biotic wealth in the medical aspect, the protocol that was collected in the so-called Berne Declaration

Either way, the native populations and communities in non-Western countries have already built their trenches because, to date, the non-binding declarations of global conferences and similar results have been meager. It's "face the misappropriation and misuse or unauthorized use of traditional knowledge. In 1979, the Organization for African Unity urged the herbal medicine research be conducted in secrecy to prevent transnational corporations from developing new drugs and selling them to developing countries at high prices (Hanlon, 1979). In 1988, the Kuna of Panama prepared a 26-page manual to regulate scientific research in your area. The Kayapo of Brazil are currently negotiating a code of rights intellectual property and a contract with The Body Shop to regulate commercial activities in their region, particularly as regards the derivation of new products based on traditional knowledge and local biological resources "(2).

THE RETURN TO NATURE

The jargon of the WHO remains suspicious despite perhaps good intentions. Since the entity is said that science needs to know what techniques and traditional therapies are positive and effective and which not. With this objective, WHO has announced that it will shortly be published scientific reports on more than one hundred medicinal plants worldwide. Regardless of the work of WHO, herbal medicine and / or traditional back because "the increasingly high cost of drug research becomes increasingly difficult the introduction of new drugs on the market, and that they pose a real innovation; More often establish small changes, not always advantageous. Other times, the drug incorporated awakens a hope that later are disappointed "(3), for patients around the world increasingly wary of drugs and therapies and scientific enterprises with inability to independence, as the progress is attributable to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, for the iatrogenic (problems caused by allopathic medicine) is increasing and infectious diseases, for the misuse of antibiotics, for example, are evolving into new and dangerous goals.

In short, given the problems caused, traditional medicine, in particular herbal medicine and proper use of medicinal plants "aims to play an important role in the therapeutics of the future. For economic reasons, by the possibilities of extending the therapeutic armamentarium in the absence (a correct dose) of side effects and significant and the confidence he deserves much of the population "(4). One thing most of the WHO: 80% of the African population uses traditional medicines and in the past decade, the use of natural remedies among the populations of Europe and the United States experienced a rise of 100%.