WHO

SOURCE: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_medicine

The World Health Organization defines ‘Traditional Medicine’ as “the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement and treatment of physical and mental illness”.

In some Asian countries, up to 80% of the population relies on traditional medicine for primary health care needs. Traditional medicine is a form of alternative medicine, according to the WHO. Practices known as traditional medicines include Traditional Chinese Medicine, which holds among other “Fu Zhen” and “Qi Nei Zang”, the two methods I occasionally apply. Scientific disciplines that study traditional medicine include medical anthropology.

Medical Anthropology studies factors which influence health and well-being (broadly defined), the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of culturally diverse medical systems.

Having worked longtime as a healthcare professional (NL, DE, TH, ET, SA, CH) and later educated as a cultural anthropologist (master’s thesis on medical anthropology research), I am genuinely interested in traditional medicine, in particular traditional medicine as applied in the countries of the Mekong region (the regional focus of my anthropology education).

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