NEW DELHI – The theme was “Scaling Access to Ensure Health Equity”, but that hardly reflected the intense concerns raised at the first World Health Summit Regional Meeting with the storm of Trump Administration cutbacks and closures of global health programmes since January.  

Traditional medicine, climate and health, data transparency, and the role of AI were among the key issues discussed and debated at the regional meeting, the first ever to be held in South Asia in the elegant Bharat Mandapam conference centre, a Modi pet project built for the G20.

The global Summit, convened in Berlin every autumn by the German government and the World Health Organization is a highly influential gathering of global and national health officials, practitioners, the private sector and civil society.  The regional summit in Delhi seemed to copy that successful patent with over 4,500 participants from 54 countries in attendance at the three-day event, which ended on Sunday. 

For WHS’s Indian hosts, the meeting was, however, part of a push for recognizing traditional medicine, a longstanding government priority, as an key player in global health. The traditional medicine sessions at the summit “promises to serve as a major milestone for the global traditional medicine sector,” according to a statement by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB), and offer “opportunities to advance universal access to safe and effective traditional medicine practices.”  In early December, New Delhi will host the second WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit, which the government has framed as “sustainable health solutions rooted in cultural heritage.”bes

In its own statement, WHO noted the increasing demand for traditional herbal products, and rapid projected growth of over 8% annually, in coming years, almost doubling the industry value to $437 billion from $233 billion last year. 

“Significant new opportunities are driven by research findings, such as dehydrated greens for treating anemia, and the integration of Ayurvedic practices and yoga with biomedicine for successful management of filarial lymphedema,” said the WHO statement. “Yet challenges persist, including the need for greater scientific validation, regulatory oversight, and sustainability. Increasing consumer and commercial demands, alongside inconsistent quality control, safety monitoring gaps, and environmental concerns, require more scientific innovation, regulatory reform, consumer engagement, and sustainable resource management.”

Trump’s attack on global health institutions ‘a wake-up call’ 

Meanwhile, Trump’s decisions to withdraw from WHO as well as dismantle USAID and its many health-focus aid programmes are a “wake-up call”, declared WHS president, Axel R. Pries in his remarks on the Summit’s opening day – adding that he hoped global health leaders could see this “as a challenge that they can operate effectively without the US.” 

At a packed session on ‘The changing face of global health – what does the US withdrawal mean for pandemic preparedness and response?’  and elsewhere, experts voiced similar concerns. 

Speaking to Health Policy Watch, Pries said, “If you say the US is pulling out and that’s creating a big change in the system, that tells you the system was wrong before, because we are many nations on the world. India is a big nation with three or four times the population of the US. So why should a single country make such a difference?”

Pries warned that if other nations follow in America’s footsteps and reduce health funding especially for global programmes, that would be “the wrong direction.” 

World Health Assembly likely to adopt traditional medicine strategy in May

The Indian government, meanwhile, used the summit largely as a platform to promote major upcoming moves on traditional medicine remedies and strategies – including the Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine, scheduled for December and a pending new WHO global strategy on TM, which is due to come before the World Health Assembly in May for approval. 

Shri Prataprao Jadhav, Minister of Ayush, India’s traditional medicine ministry, described the event as an important leadup to the December summit, which will also be hosted in New Delhi. He called the regional meeting, “a timely opportunity to advance global dialogue on traditional medicine… in light of the “growing interest in holistic health.”

The focus on TM at the regional summit also reflects “India’s leadership in advancing traditional medicine globally,” Jadhav said.

The government is “supporting research to harness the power of these ancient practices. Using innovation, data and partnerships, we can increase safety and protect biodiversity,” said Ayush Ministry Secretary, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, at the Summit keynote session: ‘Restoring balance: Scaling up access to evidence-based traditional medicine for health and well-being.’  

The momentum by the Indian government and the WHO has been building up for some time now. The Indian government provided foundational support for the WHO to establish its headquarters for the Global Traditional Medicine Centre at Jamnagar, in Gujarat, India; incidentally, the city is famous for the world’s largest oil refinery, which is run by Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man.

Last February, the WHO included a new module in  the International Classification of Diseases, covering TM treatments for certain conditions, which the Indian government had long sought. This aims to allow for the more systematic tracking of traditional medicine services, research, and reporting. India’s government later announced it will prepare a public health strategy based on the WHO’s new ICD listing. 

Hurdles to traditional medicine 

While the WHA will “hopefully” approve the new global TM strategy, WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a recorded message, the WHO statement also stressed the need to ensure more rigorous scientific study and regulatory oversight of TM.  

Increasing consumer and commercial demands have come against a landscape of inconsistent quality control, safety monitoring gaps, and environmental concerns, said the WHO statement. Other challenges persist, include the need for more scientific innovation, informed consumer engagement, and sustainable resource management. 

Speaking at the keynote, the WHO’s Regional Director, Saima Wazed, said that without robust regulatory systems, “a lot of harmful toxins” can be incorporated into TM remedies, without consumers being aware.

“Traditional medicine has always been part of our culture, particularly in Southeast Asia, and all 11 countries have very robust practices. But the scientific evidence has not evolved in the similar strain as modern-day medicine. And so WHO’s role is to ensure that we have the right evidence,” she says.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s former Chief Scientist, highlighted another challenge. Bridging the traditional and modern requires a common language and vocabulary. Acknowledging that this takes time and effort, she called on the WHO and national bodies to take the lead. 

And despite recent, rapid moves for wider discussions and research, traditional medicine remains controversial and contentious.  “You need an open mind on both sides to be able to develop this framework of how do you design and implement a clinical trial,” Swaminathan said. 

It’s not science versus TM – it’s science for TM

There’s a reason why allopathic (conventional) medicine took off and did so well, said the Indian entrpreneur Aditya Burman Dabur, whose family business, Dabur, has manufactured traditional medications for local and international markets for decades. That’s because of the practices that it followed of getting evidence, writing it down, and making it publicly available in a manner that can be replicated, he pointed out.

In contrast, traditional medicine’s reliance on anecdotal evidence is not enough, Burman explained: “That’s not going to carry it across the oceans.”

Rather  by making use of peer-reviewed journal publications and doing things the way “that people expect us to do it; not trying to get them to see our point of view, (but) showing it to them through their own lens”, TM can come into its own, he asserted.  

Pries, meanwhile, struck a conciliatory note.  While underscoring the need for science-based evidence, conferences such as the World Health Summit can offer a “platform where the stakeholders talk to each other,” he said, adding: 

“It’s not science versus traditional medicine, it’s science for traditional medicine.”  

Image Credits: Chetan Bhattacharji /HPW.