Welcome remarks

“First WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit”

17 and 18 August 2023 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

PAHO DIRECTOR REMARKS FOR REGIONAL EXHIBITION HALL

Hello everyone; my name is Jarbas Barbosa. I am the Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Regional Director of AMRO, the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Since the 1990s, with the launching of the Indigenous Peoples Initiative, PAHO has been a global leader in recognizing the inextricable link between culture and health and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant, and other ethnic groups to their healing traditions. In 2017, PAHO Member States adopted by consensus, after an exhaustive consultative process, the Policy on Ethnicity and Health, followed by a related regional Strategy and Action Plan. These frameworks advocate, among others, for the recognition of ancestral knowledge and traditional and complementary medicine to advance toward our Universal Health goals.  

This year, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution on the Health of Indigenous Peoples, reinforcing the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy’s call to integrate, as appropriate, safe, and evidence-based traditional and complementary medicine services, within national and sub-national health systems, with a primary health care approach.

In our region, 17 countries and territories have laws, policies, or strategies to recognize, respect, protect, and incorporate knowledge-based traditional, ancestral, and complementary medicine into national health systems. The implementation of these initiatives, and the Covid-19 pandemic, have highlighted the importance of intercultural frameworks for developing culturally appropriate quality health interventions and people-centered health systems and services.

The Region of the Americas has a broad cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, where multiple therapeutic systems, traditions, and practices coexist. In the Regional Exhibition at the First WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar, India, you will learn how this diversity manifests in concrete initiatives and programs across our region. You will also learn about the technical cooperation strategies that the Pan American Health Organization has been developing to support these efforts, including the development of policy frameworks, tools to expand access to scientific evidence such as the Virtual Health Library on the subject, the generation of evidence synthesis that can inform clinical practice and decision-making, documentation of good practices, capacity building, experiences exchange, among others.

The Summit will also feature our region’s contributions to traditional knowledge and biodiversity conservation in the context of global efforts toward sustainability and planetary health.

We invite you to visit our region’s exhibition area and interact with us. I also invite you to engage with our regional delegation, composed of official representatives, experts, and practitioners from 25 countries. I wish the greatest success in this Traditional Medicine Global Summit, and we hope to continue building together. Thank you!

Biological and cultural diversity as foreground to traditional knowledge and therapeutic pluralism: toward people- and community-centered health systems in the Americas.

The Americas, home to one billion people, is one of the most bio-diverse regions, encompassing seven of the 17 mega-diverse countries in the world. The region has an astounding ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

Although the region has made remarkable human development improvements, many challenges remain. Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescendants, Romani, and many others ethnic groups inhabiting the region have historically endured multiple forms of discrimination and exclusion, resulting in significant inequities. These peoples, however, are depositories of ancient knowledge and healing traditions that are often overlooked.

In the Americas Region multiple healing systems, traditions and therapeutic practices coexist. Some developed locally by Indigenous Peoples, others imported from different world regions. These healing practices are the main form of care in many contexts, and are often used alongside biomedicine and public health interventions for promoting health, preventing, diagnosing, and treating ailments and health conditions, and for supporting people in rehabilitative processes and end-of-life care.

Recognizing these ancestral knowledge and practices is essential to contribute to health care access and Universal Health Coverage. Countries in the region have worked toward recognizing, protecting, articulating, and integrating Traditional and Complementary Medicine in health systems and services, including self-care strategies, through the development of normative and policy frameworks, and the implementation of initiatives to provide culturally adequate, people-centered quality health services.

For over 30 years, PAHO has been at the global forefront of recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant, and other ethnic groups to their healing traditions. PAHO´s Indigenous Peoples Initiative, launched in 1993, created a framework for regional action to understanding Traditional Indigenous Medicine systems in The Americas, and to highlight the importance of the intercultural approach to transforming health systems and providing people-centered care. The initiative also provided an avenue to understanding the potential place of Complementary and Integrative Medicine within national health systems.

In 2017, PAHO Member States adopted by consensus, after an exhaustive consultative process, the Policy on Ethnicity and Health, followed by a related regional Strategy and Action Plan. This policy has a priority action line that focuses on the “recognition of ancestral knowledge and traditional and complementary medicine” aimed at harnessing their potential contribution to health, wellness, and people-centered health care, in alignment with the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy.

Following institutional mandates, PAHO has supported Member States’ efforts to implement intercultural health initiatives and health systems transformation through its technical and scientific cooperation.

In the Americas, 17 countries and territories have laws, policies, or strategies to recognize, respect, protect, and incorporate knowledge-based traditional, ancestral, and complementary medicine into national health systems. 24 countries in the Americas have ratified the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention

International Labour Organization, which states that health services should be planned and delivered in cooperation with the peoples involved, and “take into account their economic, geographic, social and cultural conditions as well as their traditional preventive care, healing practices and medicines.”

In our region, there is an inextricable link between biodiversity and traditional knowledge in health. It is imperative that we work toward safeguarding such knowledge and guaranteeing sustainability and biodiversity conservation amid climate change and other contemporaneous challenges to planetary health.

The Americas Region contributions to expanding the evidence base for Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine are remarkable, as it has been the development of professional training programs. With PAHO´s support, a multi-stakeholder network created to foster experience exchange and collaboration has developed a specialized Virtual Health Library that seeks to enhance access to scientific and technical information to support practitioners, policy makers, and the general public in making evidence-informed choices. To advance toward Universal Health in the 21st Century, a PAHO high-level commission recommended, among others, that countries develop people- and community-centered primary health care-based models of care that take into account human diversity, interculturalism, and ethnicity. The region is highly committed to these goals and PAHO is prepared to support its Member States to leave no one behind and enhance planetary health.