WHO holds technical meeting on classification of traditional medicine in Hong Kong

26 May 2010

Today (May 26), about 50 delegates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and eight countries, including Australia, China, Germany, Korea, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States, joined local experts in a three-day meeting to launch the First International Classification of Traditional Medicine (ICTM) project.

Participants are either practitioners or academics in disease terminology, classification or informatics. The project aims to develop an international standard set of harmonised terminology and classification for traditional medicine.

The event, entitled "First WHO Meeting on the International Classification of Traditional Medicine", is organised by the WHO with support from the Department of Health.

At the opening ceremony, the Director of Health, Dr PY Lam, spoke in support of the project as it would go a long way to enhancing the integration of traditional medicine into the WHO Family of International Classifications which is crucial to the documentation on matters relating to traditional medicine.

The development of the ICTM project plan was consequent to discussion outcomes of a previous WHO’s working group meeting last year, also hosted by Hong Kong's Department of Health.

"It is generally recognised that traditional medicine is increasingly popular worldwide. The ICTM will provide a platform for compiling healthcare statistics and information on traditional medicine which in turn can facilitate the study and evaluation of traditional medicine and documentation of its role in disease prevention and treatment," Dr Lam said.