The World Health Assembly delivered a landmark victory for traditional medicine and indigenous cultures Monday evening, approving a strategy that calls for increased investment in research and integrating ancient healing practices into modern healthcare systems worldwide.

The approval marks a breakthrough moment for advocates of traditional medicine, with nations across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America celebrating the decision. Iran called it “a visionary yet realistic roadmap” to integrate thousands of years of medical like its own.

But the strategy text shows WHO walking a careful tightrope, embracing practices that represent “accumulated wisdom and healing practices passed down through generations” while demanding they meet modern scientific evidence standards that could take decades to satisfy.

The strategy that will be in place between 2025-2034 was passed after an intense discussion that saw the European Union voice concerns about quality and safety, embodying the tension between empirical science and millennia-old traditions at the heart of the UN health body’s move.

“We urge the organization to be firm and vocal against harmful and or inefficient practices that may be disguised as alternative medicines,” said the delegate from Poland who made a statement on behalf of the EU and its 27 member states.

The strategy does not imply a preference for TCIM practice over biomedical practice, WHO said. While acknowledging traditional medicine’s “immense value” as a “vast repository of knowledge,” the strategy consistently emphasises that integration must be “scientifically valid” and “evidence-based.”

“It seeks to harness the potential contribution of TCIM to health and well-being based on evidence,” the strategy reads. “It is also designed to prevent misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.”

More than 80% of the world’s population in over 170 of the 194 WHO member states use traditional medicine of some form. In some industrialized countries like France and Canada, usage reaches nearly half the population. 

The WHO’s move reflects recognition of a field that serves billions of people worldwide and acknowledges the significant contributions of indigenous cultures to medicine. Around 40% of pharmaceutical products have their origins in traditional medicine, according to the WHO.

“The history, the cultural heritage, the ancestral knowledge…all anchor our traditional medicine work,” said Dr Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General for Universal Health Coverage at WHO, while assuring countries of WHO’s support as they find the best ways to integrate their traditional practices in their national systems.

Between Tradition and Evidence

This strategy begins what will be a long and expensive process to standardize and regulate care with traditional methods. Hurdles lie ahead, from financing and research capacity to government wrangling over how to establish global standards.

The scale of the task is enormous: systematically studying thousands of years of accumulated knowledge to meet regulatory standards for integration into national health systems. Yet no countries nor WHO made any pledges for further investment in traditional medicine research, and the strategy contains no funding figures either.

“I think that what’s new in this [final] version that wasn’t there before is also looking at the cross-sector value of traditional approaches and learning. There is this big section on protection of indigenous practice and knowledge, and how we can learn from them,” said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, a Geneva-based physician and President of the Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Healthcare Coalition (TCIH).

The central challenge remains evidence. WHO is encouraging countries to integrate traditional medicine into their national health systems, but only when supported by rigorous scientific research that much of traditional medicine currently lacks.

“I don’t think anybody expects WHO to recommend something that is not fully evidence-based,” Schoen-Angerer said. But at this point, while there is strong evidence for some traditional medicine, there is next to nothing for others.

Schoen-Angerer told Health Policy Watch that there was opposition to this draft from Europe, though Asian, African, Middle-Eastern and Latin American countries were largely onboard.

“You have very good evidence for some methods like acupuncture, mindfulness, et cetera, for certain herbs, and you have less evidence for other practices,” Schoen-Angerer said, adding that the WHO’s push for more investment will help create more evidence in the coming years.

This view received pushback from Switzerland-based civil society group Medicus Mundi International Network—a reaction that puts the tension of applying modern science to ancient tradition on full display, raising the question of whether tradition can ever be truly “scientifically valid” by Western paradigms.

“The WHO’s draft Traditional Medicine Strategy (2025–2034) recognizes the value of traditional and Indigenous healing but falls short by privileging Western scientific paradigms over Indigenous epistemologies,” said the delegate from the organization.

“Centering ‘evidence-based’ validation risks displacing practices rooted in land, culture, and spirituality,” she added.

The Funding Challenge: Big Ambitions, Modest Resources

WHO wants countries to spend on research, but the strategy lacks concrete funding commitments—a familiar challenge in the current global health arena. No countries, groups or WHO itself made new funding announcements in Geneva during the passing of the strategy.

The expectation is that WHO’s new strategy will encourage countries to allocate more funding for research, but the strategy places far more burden on member states than on WHO itself.

While directing countries to “establish a national research agenda” and “allocate dedicated resources,” WHO’s own commitments are limited to developing guidelines and technical documents.

The lack of WHO investment likely stems from its own financial crisis. The organization is currently facing a $1.5 billion budget deficit after already slashing its budget by nearly a quarter.

In 2022, India gave WHO $85 million over ten years to build evidence and towards the setting up of WHO Global Centre of Traditional Medicine in Jamnagar. 

Historically, such specialised areas struggle for funding. Women’s health, for example, receives only about 10% of U.S. National Institutes of Health funding.

Conversation on Standardizing Care

Traditional medicine spans both oral and codified forms of medicine, and this draft seeks to get countries to work towards creating unified standards—a complex task given the vast diversity of practices across cultures and continents.

“We urge WHO to support countries in developing context-sensitive methodologies, including those that encompass non-codified and oral traditions, to ensure scientific rigour,” a delegate from Thailand said.

The EU, which had already pushed back against the strategy prior to this week’s vote, urged WHO to be guarded as it engages with the industry to prepare standards.

“We strongly recommend preventing conflicts of interest in line with FENSA (Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors), when engaging with industry and practitioners to devise regulations, and standards for TCIM products and activities,” the delegate from Poland said.

Balancing Rights of Indigenous People with the Challenge of Spurious Products

The WHO’s endorsement has created new opportunities for countries to address a persistent challenge: how to protect legitimate traditional medicine practices while cracking down on fake cures and fraud operations under the cover of spirituality.

Such problems are already widespread globally. For instance, the Indian company Patanjali, which claims to sell products rooted in India’s traditional medicine system of Ayurveda but is embroiled in several lawsuits for “false and misleading” claims. The company in its early years saw fast growth due to its branding and benefited from a relatively lax regulation system for traditional medicine products. 

African nations like Comoros and Togo acknowledged that while TCIM is widely used in their countries, the sector remains unregulated and training the providers remains a challenge.

“It has a great deal of potential, and it has been practised for a very long time by our ancestors. However, it is not within a framework or well-regulated,” the delegate from Comoros said.

In many small island nations, indigenous people are the custodians of TCIM. In others, TCIM is often the only available healthcare for large parts of the population.

“Our traditional medicine, while not fully aligned with the formal, traditional, complementary and interpretive medicine definition, is rooted in local customs, indigenous knowledge and natural resources,” said the delegate from Micronesia, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. “We see these practices as important to supporting our health systems and advancing universal health coverage.”

Thailand, too, said it was important to uphold the rights of indigenous people and ensure that any profit made from using local biodiversity and indigenous knowledge ought to be shared with them—a contentious issue that will get pushback from pharmaceutical companies, who argue that paying for access to resources would hinder innovation. 

Image Credits: WHO, WHO, WHO.