WHO GLOBAL CENTRE FOR TRADITIONAL MEDICINE IN GUJARAT

Context

The development of a World Health Organization Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (WHO GCTM) in Jamnagar, Gujarat, has been approved by the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Indian government has inked an agreement with the world body. The move will aid in developing essential technical norms, standards, and recommendations, as well as tools and processes for data collection, analytics, and effect assessment.

Key Points

• The WHO GCTM will be the first worldwide outpost (office) for traditional medicines. It will be established under the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa, and Homoeopathy).
• Benefits
• To position AYUSH systems around the world to deliver leadership on traditional medicine-related global health issues
• To ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of traditional medicine and its accessibility and reasonable application.
• To create norms, standards, and guidelines in key technical domains and tools and processes for data collection, analytics, and effect assessment. Imagine the WHO TM Informatics Centre bringing together current TM Data banks, virtual libraries, and academic and research organisations to build a collaboration.
• Develop particular capacity building and training programmes in areas relevant to the objectives, and deliver training on campus, in residential settings, or online, collaborating with the WHO Academy and other strategic partners.

Plan Structure

• The actions for the development of this Centre will be coordinated, executed, and monitored by a Joint Task Force (JTF). 
• Representatives from the Government of India, the Permanent Mission of India in Geneva, and the World Health Organization make up the Joint Task Force. 
• To carry out the identified technical activities and plan for a fully functional WHO GCTM, an interim office is being established at the ITRA in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
• The interim office will focus on evidence generation and innovation, artificial intelligence-based traditional medicine solutions, systematic reviews in collaboration with Cochrane, a global survey on traditional medicine data across WHO GPW 13 (Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019-2023) and sustainable development goals, traditional medicine socio-cultural and biodiversity heritage with a forward-looking approach to sustainable development, and traditional medicine socio-cultural and biodiversity heritage with a forward-looking approach to sustainable development.
• The WHO GCTM would be in charge of all global health issues involving traditional medicine, as well as assisting member nations in developing policies relating to traditional medicine research, practise, and public health.

The Ministry of AYUSH initiatives

• The Ministry of AYUSH has worked with WHO on a number of projects, including developing benchmark documents for Ayurveda and Unani System training and practise, introducing the second module in the Traditional Medicine Chapter of the International Classification of Diseases-11, developing apps like M-yoga, and supporting the work of the International Pharmacopeia of Herbal Medicine (IPHM) and other research studies.