Pharmacovigilance and Traditional and Complementary Medicine in South-East Asia

Overview

Many Member States of WHO's South-Eat Asia Region have a long history and rich heritage of using traditional medicine. They have integrated traditional medicine into their national healthcare delivery systems in many ways, and to varying degrees. Safety is always a fundamental principle in the provision of any treatment and procedures. Given the reality of wide use of traditional medicine across the Region, monitoring the safety of traditional medicines becomes important among the priority areas of working Member States. One of the common challenges that Member States face is how to establish and further strengthen the safety monitoring system for traditional medicine products, particularly with regard to pharmacovigilance. This was highlighted in a regional workshop on the appropriate integration of traditional medicine into national healthcare delivery systems, held in Pyongyang, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, from 20 to 22 October 2015. Regional action plans were discussed and developed in this workshop. One of the action points was to support Member States to strengthen their adverse-events reporting systems for traditional medicine by sharing their experiences of developing such systems. Accordingly, WHO's South-East Asia Regional Office commissioned a regional survey on pharmacovigilance for traditional and complementary medicine products in 2018 after two country case studies on the subject were carried out in 2016. This report was developed based on the findings of the survey. We trust that this survey report will give Member States a quick overall perspective on the subject as it applies in the WHO South-East Asia Region.