Promoting Traditional Medicine In Mongolia

Main Category: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine
Article Date: 23 Aug 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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From 23 to 26 August in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a joint inter-regional workshop, organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The Nippon Foundation, will examine the impact of an unique experiment in traditional medicine in Mongolia's primary health care system.

-- The WHO's Alma-Ata Declaration in 1978, which re-affirmed that health is a fundamental human right, urged governments for the first time to include traditional medicine in their primary health systems and recognise traditional medicine practitioners as health workers. During the last 30 years there has been a considerable expansion in the use of traditional medicine across the world.

-- In Mongolia, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992, new market forces meant that supplies of conventional medicines became prohibitively expensive for most of the population. Moreover, with one doctor for 600 people in the rural areas - and the vaste distances to be covered - medical services were virtually unobtainable in rural communities.

-- This situation led to a revival of traditional medicine, which , in Mongolia, has a 2000 year history. This includes acupuncture, cauterisation, manual therapy, blood letting and therapies using mares' milk - all of which relate to the lifestyle of people in rural areas.

-- Numerous surveys and research were subsequently carried out by The Nippon Foundation, the largest private foundation in Japan, to explore the possibility of improving public health care through traditional medicine in Mongolia. The research focused on the possible use of traditional medicine alongside Western medicine, the depth of faith in traditional medicine, the affordability of traditional medications, and the lifestyle of herdsmen living in remote areas away from hospitals.

As a result, the decision was reached, with the support of the Mongolian Government, to make use of traditional Mongolian medicine and the Japanese system for distributing medicines (household pharmaceutical kits) to individual households.

--The project, launched in 2004, involves the delivery of a medical kit of 12 types of traditional medicines to households in rural areas. The households use the medicines as they need them - and pay later when they have the money available. Ten thousand households (50,000 people) in 15 districts have now been covered - with 540 rural doctors specialising in Western medicine trained in the basic concepts of traditional medicine - and in the medicines contained in the household pharmaceutical kit, mainly for dealing with ailments of the stomach and intestines and fever.

In the four districts in three provinces in which pharmaceutical kits were distributed in 2004, house calls received by the district hospitals decreased by nearly 25 per cent after one year of the project.

-- The inter-regional workshop will exchange and share national experiences and information on the use of traditional medicine in such countries as China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao People's Democratic Republic and Myanmar. The results are expected to add to the growing popularity of traditional medicine.

http://www.ps.nippon-foundation.or.jp