ABSTRACT
The industrial manufacture of Unani and Ayurvedic medicines in Bangladesh has led to controversies about what is considered traditional medicine, as traditional drug-manufacturing companies compete with a surge of mass-produced herbal medicines in local and global markets. The increasing popularity of herbal and traditional medicines has stirred new debates about how to standardize and regulate these medicines at national and global levels. This chapter examines how the development of national drug policies for traditional medicines in Bangladesh coincided with global priorities around the increasing role of pharmaceuticals in healthcare as promoted by institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WHO’s recommendations to incorporate traditional medicine into primary healthcare systems and to provide access to “essential medicines” became entangled with contestations over how to categorize, produce, and circulate traditional medicine in Bangladesh. Traditional drug-manufacturing companies and the state both call on the authority of the WHO as a legitimate source of knowledge. I argue that WHO has a contradictory role in institutionalizing traditional medicine in Bangladesh, revealed in its dual roles as an actor that influences policies and as a symbol of a powerful global institution.
