ABSTRACT
Traditional medicine is used globally and is of rapidly growing economic importance. In developing countries, traditional medicine is often the only accessible and affordable treatment available. In Uganda, for instance, the ratio of traditional practitioners to the population is between 1:200 and 1:400, while the availability of western doctors is typically 1:20,000 or less. Moreover, doctors are mostly located in cities and other urban areas, and are therefore inaccessible to rural populations. In Africa, up to 80% of the population uses traditional medicine as the primary healthcare system. In Latin America, the WHO Regional Offi ce for the Americas (AMRO/PAHO) reports that 71% of the population in Chile and 40% of the population in Colombia use traditional medicine. In many Asian countries traditional medicine is widely used, even though western medicine is often readily available. In Japan, 60-70% of allopathic doctors prescribe traditional medicines for their patients. In China, traditional medicine accounts for about 40% of all healthcare, and is used to treat roughly 200 million patients annually. The number of visits to providers of Complementary-Alternative Medicine (CAM) now exceeds by far the number of visits to all primary care physicians in the US (WHO 1999a,b, 2002).
