Brazzaville, 21 November 2005 -- The WHO Regional Office for Africa has convened the Fifth Meeting of the WHO Regional Expert Committee on Traditional Medicine which is taking place in Brazzaville, Congo, from 21 to 25 November. The 12-member committee was set up in May 2001 by the WHO Regional Director for Africa in response to a resolution promoting the role of traditional medicine in health systems adopted by health ministers at the fiftieth session of the Regional Committee for Africa, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The Expert Committee, which ended its first term of service in June 2005, is starting a new four-year second term which comprises six of its original members and six new ones. During the next five days, the Committee will establish a regional mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of the progress made in the implementation of the Regional Strategy.

At the opening ceremony, Director of Programme Management, Dr Paul Lusamba-Dikassa, speaking on behalf of the WHO Regional Director, Dr Luis Gomes Sambo, informed the participants that since its establishment, this Expert Committee has approved 12 of the 14 revised documents. Most of these documents were guidelines to help countries improve the use of traditional medicine. Both traditional and modern medicine can contribute to meeting the targets of the “Health-for-All Policy for the 21st Century in the African Region: Agenda 2020”.

In his opening address, the Regional Director, Dr Luis Gomes Sambo, said: “these tools and guidelines were developed to support countries to institutionalize traditional medicine in health systems and to harmonize their policies and regulation”. He also emphasized that during its first term of service; the Committee proposed strategies and provided technical support to the Regional Office Secretariat and countries on various issues related to the priority interventions of the Regional Strategy.

Concerning the local production of plant-based medicines, the Regional Director said that this Committee and the WHO Secretariat should make a paradigm shift in research in order to support countries to produce evidence on safety, efficacy and quality. Countries also need to build capacity in institutional and legal frameworks, quality control and assurance systems, good agricultural and collection practices for medicinal and aromatic plants, information and communication, appropriate systems of intellectual property rights for protection of indigenous knowledge and Good Manufacturing Practices.

The Regional Director emphasized that the work of this Committee would be facilitated by the already existing political commitment and engagement of traditional medicine at country, regional and global levels. In conclusion, he added, “such commitments include the Abuja Declaration of 2000 on research on traditional medicines used for malaria, HIV/AIDS and other priority diseases; the Lusaka Declaration of 2001 on the Decade of African Traditional Medicine (2001-2010); and the declaration by the WHO Regional Director for Africa on 2006 as the Year for Acceleration of HIV Prevention in the African Region where traditional medicine has a role to play.”

The meeting was attended not only by the 12 WHO regional expert committee members but also by experts from the Republic of Congo, Nigeria and South Africa. The Regional Office for Africa is the only one of the six WHO regions that has established an Expert Committee on Traditional Medicine.