Positive Health Online

Abstract

HOLLIDAY, Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, ian.holliday@cityu.edu.hk, writes about traditional medicines in modern societies, exploring integration options from East Asian experience. Abstract: The World Health Organization's first global strategy on traditional and alternative medicine from May 2002 recommends integration of conventional medicine with complementary and alternative therapies. However experience from East Asia shows that such integration can take different forms. This article categorizes these forms, identifying three types of integration (unification, equalization, and subjugation) and one form of non-integration (marginalization). It marks out a zone of balanced healthcare development cutting across unification and equalization and comprising non-discriminatory treatment of separate but linked sectors of traditional and modern medicine. The article explores arguments for and against state intervention in this zone, and holds that policy should be situated here for medical practices that can meet broadly acceptable professional standards, demonstrate an existing social demand, and generate an adequate supply of qualified practitioners.

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References

Holliday I. Traditional medicines in modern societies: an exploration of integrationist options through East Asian experience. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (3): 373-389, Jun 2003.

Comment

It is good to see a paper exploring the issue of integration from a point of view that does not just get bogged down in the need for evidence-based practice, but holds a wider perspective, particularly that of social demand for complementary therapies.