Abstract
Worldwide, traditional treatments (including herbal medicines) and traditional practitioners are still the primary source of health for many millions of people. The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for the incorporation of traditional medicine in public health services. However, for most of the traditional practices, information about efficacy, safety and quality is poor, and the control on the proper utilisation of these practices is scarce or inexistent, so the evaluation of the results of treatment (efficacy) is quite difficult. Moreover, the established standards, certification requirements, competency testing (quality), or legal requirements for a business licence (regulation) are often absent. The global integration of traditional medicine in public health services envisioned by WHO depends on a coordinated approach by the following stakeholders: regulators, healthcare professionals/traditional practitioners, manufacturers and patients/public. In this chapter, we provide the reader with an overall picture of the challenges faced by each of the stakeholders and what are the current approaches to solve them. We deliberately will restrict the discussion to herbal medicines, specifically Phytotherapy, which is just one of the many types of traditional practices.
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Abbreviations
- ADME:
-
Absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion
- ADR:
-
Adverse drug reactions
- ANVISA:
-
National Sanitary Surveillance Agency
- BCM:
-
Brazilian Central of Medicines
- CAM:
-
Complementary and alternative medicines
- CHP:
-
Conventional healthcare practitioners
- GC:
-
Gas chromatography
- HDI:
-
Herbal-drug interaction
- HPLC:
-
High-performance liquid chromatography
- MHRA:
-
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
- NCCAM:
-
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
- NDMC:
-
National Drug Monitoring Centre
- NHPD:
-
Natural Health Products Directorate
- NHPs:
-
Natural health products
- NHS:
-
National Health Systems
- NNHPD:
-
Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate
- PNPIC:
-
National Policy on Complementary and Integrative Practices
- PNPMF:
-
National Policy on Medicinal Plants and Herbal Medicines
- QC:
-
Quality control
- RENAME:
-
Brazilian list of essential medicines
- RENISUS:
-
Plant species considered significant to SUS
- SUS:
-
Brazilian public health system
- TAIM:
-
Traditional Arabic and Islamic medicine
- TCM:
-
Traditional Chinese medicine
- THMP:
-
Traditional herbal medicinal product
- TKM:
-
Traditional Korean medicine
- TLC:
-
Thin-layer chromatography
- TMP:
-
Traditional medicine practitioners
- UK:
-
United Kingdom
- USA:
-
United States of America
- VIGIPÓS/Notivisa:
-
National Notification System to the Sanitary Surveillance
- WHO:
-
World Health Organization
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Silveira, D., Prieto, J.M., Freitas, M.M., Mazzari, A.L.D.A. (2018). Herbal Medicine and Public Healthcare: Current and Future Challenges. In: Cechinel Filho, V. (eds) Natural Products as Source of Molecules with Therapeutic Potential. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00545-0_13
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