In India, the CSIR has joined with various public and private partners to conduct clinical trials with herbal products generated by reverse pharmacology. According to the entity, the initiative has allowed the acceptance of traditional Ayurvedic medicine remedies to grow and promises cheaper, more effective and efficient drugs. [10]
And at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Africa, scientists from the Center for Traditional Medicine and Drug Research are testing thousands of plants in the hope of finding a new antimalarial (See Turning plants into pills in Kenya). The team has come up with a few promising prototypes, though none have proven effective enough to become a drug candidate.
Gain ground
Integrating traditional medicine into modern medical care is an initiative that is undoubtedly being taken seriously by the world’s leading research centers. In 2007, 62 countries had national institutes for traditional medicine, compared to 12 in 1970. [11]
Within the framework of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, for example, there is an organization called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which this year has a budget of US$128. .8 million.
NCCAM funds research on how acupuncture, herbal supplements, meditation or osteopathy can help treat conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and neurological disorders.
Developing countries with a long history of traditional medicine are also looking for ways to modernize their medical legacy. In China, modern and traditional medicine are practiced side by side at all levels of the health system. The government attaches equal importance to the development of both and there is a large and active research community around ‘integral medicine’.
Likewise, in Latin America, several countries are working to offer modern and traditional health care in parallel (See End medical domination over the developing world).
African governments, including Ghana and Nigeria, are running educational campaigns and launching anti-counterfeiting technologies to better control drug procurement. And initiatives such as the African Pharmacology and Diagnostics Innovation Network encourage the search for drugs from traditional medicine products.
Traditional medicine has much to offer to world health
For all these reasons especially in view of the urgent need for new drugs. If developed and developing countries pooled their research capabilities in equitable collaborations, new scientific techniques could stimulate their renaissance in global health research and development.
William Osler was born on July 12, 1849 in Bond Head (Canada), now Ontario; The son of an Anglican clergyman, he studied at McGill University, in Montreal, where he obtained a doctorate in Medicine, in 1872.
His training was comprehensive and global since he later studied postgraduate studies in Europe for two years; at the University of London, where he studied physiology between 1872 and 1873, he continued in Berlin, where he met Rudolf Virchow, and then in Vienna, which were among the most developed cities in medicine. He also dedicated himself to the study of histology, physiology, pathology and in the knowledge of the hospital clinic. (one)