Payesh (Jan 2007)
Complementary medicine and health system
Abstract
Unconventional therapies include the interventions neither taught in medical schools nor generally available in hospitals. Many people use unconventional therapies for health problems and the frequency of using unconventional therapy is higher than previous. Some studies show that the cause of increasing the use of unconventional therapies (Complementary medicine) is due to deficiency and insufficiency of the conventional therapies which resulted in incomplete care.Statistics indicate that in Belgium 66%-75%, in Iran 42%, in US 34%, in UK 33%, in Germany 20-30% and in Netherlands 18% were using complementary medicine. Complementary medicine suffers from a poor research infrastructure and a lack of high quality evidence. Common reasons given for this were a lack of understanding of research ethics and methodology, an unwillingness to evaluate evidence, and a shortage of resources. Thus, considering the increase use of unconventional therapies, following steps are suggested for standardization of complementary medicine:- Situational analysis in the filed of complementary medicine - Recognition of unconventional practitioners- Information system Implementation- Implementation of research in complementary medicine- Resource allocation for abow programsSuch approach might lead to innovations that could result in the accreditation of complementary therapeutic interventions.
