Billions rely on it, yet only 1% of research funding supports it
For millennia, billions of people have turned to traditional healers, plant medicines, and ancestral practices as their first and often only recourse against illness — yet the institutions of modern medicine have largely looked away. In October 2025, the World Health Organization formally unveiled a ten-year global strategy in Rio de Janeiro, seeking to reconcile this ancient inheritance with the demands of evidence, regulation, and equitable health systems. The moment reflects a growing recognition that what two-thirds of humanity already does cannot remain invisible to science and policy alike.
- Billions rely on traditional medicine daily, yet nearly 90% of its practitioners operate outside formal health systems — unsupervised, unstandardized, and largely invisible to regulators.
- Only 1% of global health research funding flows toward traditional medicine, leaving a vast body of practice without the scientific scrutiny modern health systems require.
- WHO's new ten-year strategy — built on four pillars of research, regulation, integration, and collaboration — represents the most ambitious institutional attempt yet to bring these practices into the mainstream without erasing their cultural roots.
- A digital library of over 1.5 million records is being assembled to give researchers, policymakers, and countries a shared foundation of evidence from which to build national frameworks.
- A December summit in New Delhi will introduce concrete policy tools, but the deeper test remains whether member states will translate global commitments into funded, enforceable local action.
In mid-October 2025, the World Health Organization convened its third global congress on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine in Rio de Janeiro — timing it deliberately with the public unveiling of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034, adopted by the World Health Assembly the previous May. Speaking on behalf of Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO framed the moment as a reconciliation between ancient wisdom and modern science, with the newly established WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre positioned as the institutional bridge between them.
The scale of the challenge came into focus quickly. Surveys of member states showed that between 40 and 90 percent of their populations use some form of traditional or complementary medicine, primarily to manage chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis. Yet nearly 90 percent of practitioners work in the private sector, outside formal oversight — and only about one percent of global health research funding is directed toward studying these practices. Traditional medicine is, in effect, everywhere and officially nowhere.
To close that gap, WHO is constructing a digital library of more than 1.5 million records — evidence maps, peer-reviewed research, policy documents, and regulatory frameworks — led by researchers at the Pan American Health Organization. The strategy organizing this effort rests on four pillars: building the evidence base, ensuring safety through regulation, integrating practices into existing health systems, and fostering international collaboration.
A follow-up summit planned for December in New Delhi will introduce tools to help countries move from global strategy to national policy. But the harder work lies beyond any summit — in the decisions of health ministers, regulators, and practitioners who must determine whether this ten-year vision becomes lived reality in clinics and communities around the world.
In Rio de Janeiro last month, the World Health Organization convened its third global congress on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine—a gathering that coincided with the formal launch of a ten-year strategy designed to weave these practices into the fabric of modern health systems worldwide. The congress, held in mid-October 2025, brought together researchers and health officials to confront a stubborn reality: billions of people rely on traditional medicine, yet the global health establishment has largely left it unexamined, unregulated, and unfunded.
The timing was deliberate. In May, the World Health Assembly had adopted the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034, and this congress served as its public unveiling. The opening statement, delivered on behalf of WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, framed the moment as one of reconciliation—between what he called ancient wisdom and modern science. The newly established WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre would serve as the bridge, advancing research, setting standards, and building the evidence base that traditional medicine has long lacked. By December, the organization announced, it would convene a second global summit in New Delhi to introduce concrete tools for translating that evidence into national policy.
The scale of the challenge became clear as the congress progressed. A survey of WHO member states revealed that between 40 and 90 percent of their populations use some form of traditional or complementary medicine. In three-quarters of responding countries, the primary reason people sought these treatments was to manage chronic diseases—diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and the like. Yet almost 90 percent of practitioners operate outside the formal health system, in the private sector, where oversight is minimal and quality varies wildly. The disconnect is stark: traditional medicine is everywhere, but nowhere officially.
The funding gap is equally striking. Of all the money spent globally on health research, only about one percent goes toward studying traditional medicine. Member states reported struggling with the absence of reliable data, the lack of regulatory mechanisms to monitor practitioners or products, and the scarcity of resources to build the infrastructure needed to integrate these practices safely into their health systems. The problem is not that traditional medicine is ineffective—millions of people would dispute that—but that it operates largely in the dark, without the scrutiny, standardization, or scientific validation that modern medicine demands.
To address this, the WHO is building a digital library that will eventually hold more than 1.5 million records: evidence maps, peer-reviewed articles, policy documents, multimedia resources, and regulatory frameworks. The library, led by researchers at the Pan American Health Organization, is intended to become the world's most comprehensive repository for knowledge about traditional and integrative medicine. It will allow researchers to access what is known, policymakers to see what works, and countries to learn from one another's regulatory approaches.
The strategy itself rests on four pillars: strengthening the evidence base through research, ensuring quality and safety through regulation, enabling integration into existing health systems, and fostering collaboration among countries and institutions. It is, in essence, an attempt to bring traditional medicine into the modern world without destroying what makes it valuable—its accessibility, its cultural rootedness, its focus on prevention and whole-person care.
What remains to be seen is whether member states will actually implement it. The WHO can set a strategy, build a library, and convene summits, but the real work happens in capitals and clinics, where health ministers must decide whether to fund research, where regulators must establish standards, and where practitioners must agree to be monitored. The December summit in New Delhi will offer new tools and announce new commitments, but the harder task—translating global strategy into local action—lies ahead.
Citações Notáveis
Works to bridge ancient wisdom and modern science by advancing research, innovation, standards and data— WHO statement on the Global Traditional Medicine Centre's mission
Facilitate collaboration, research and implementation of traditional, complementary and integrative policies and practices that are all effective and safe— Dr João Paulo Souza, Director of BIREME, on the purpose of the WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the WHO care about traditional medicine now? It seems like a departure from the organization's usual focus on evidence-based, Western medicine.
It's not really a departure—it's an acknowledgment of reality. Two-thirds of the world's population uses traditional medicine. You can ignore that, or you can try to understand it, regulate it, and integrate it safely. The WHO chose the latter.
But if only 1 percent of health research funding goes to traditional medicine, how serious is this commitment really?
That's the tension at the heart of the strategy. The WHO is saying: we recognize this matters, we're going to study it, we're going to set standards. But they're not saying the funding will suddenly flow. They're asking member states to do that. It's a framework, not a blank check.
The survey found that 76 percent of people seek traditional medicine for chronic diseases. That's a huge market. Why hasn't the private sector already solved this problem?
Because the private sector has no incentive to regulate itself or share data. Almost 90 percent of practitioners operate privately, outside any oversight. They're profitable precisely because they're unregulated. The WHO is trying to change the incentive structure—to make it valuable to be transparent, to be studied, to be part of the system.
What happens if countries don't adopt this strategy?
Then traditional medicine continues as it is—effective for some people, dangerous for others, impossible to study systematically. The strategy doesn't force anything. It offers tools and asks countries to use them. Some will. Some won't.