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Promoting Traditional Medicine in Healthcare

Promoting Traditional Medicine in Healthcare
Promoting Traditional Medicine in Healthcare

Traditional and Islamic medicine can develop by employing proper strategies, said deputy minister of health and medical education Mahmoud Khoda-Doost after expressing optimism about the results of a meeting of the policy-making Council of Traditional Medicine.  Necessary procedures to determine how the policies stipulated by the Supreme Leader will be integrated into the health system were discussed at the meeting, Khoda-Doost said. “One of the strategies is to open departments of traditional medicine in academic centers and provide greater support to the existing faculty. Graduate students in the field will also be assisted and hired at higher education facilities,” Alef reports.

Khoda-Doost noted that the deputy of traditional medicine in association with the Food and Drug Agency at the ministry of health and medical education will devise a bylaw to include regulations to facilitate “natural therapy and its accessibility.”

 Practitioners

The office of the deputy of traditional medicine shoulders the task of overseeing service providers of traditional and Islamic medicine, as well as offering appropriate on-the-job training to health staff to ensure that traditional medicine “is promoted and exploited alongside modern medicine.”

The ministry of education will help facilitate traditional medicine knowledge through text-books as well as tips on how to keep healthy, he said.

Certain measures will be employed in universities to develop and teach courses associated with traditional medicine including massage therapy, history of Iranian traditional medicine, pharmaceutical sciences, and traditional nursing, Khoda-Doost underlined.

 Research & Application

The Council of Traditional Medicine is expected to authorize the office of the deputy of traditional medicine to introduce a by-law supporting local knowledge in an attempt to collect and record it for further research and application under the health system. One of the slogans of traditional medicine is “maintaining self-care.” In the ancient texts, Iranian and other Muslim medicine men like Avicenna and Zakhireye Khwarazmshahi pointed to the importance of self-care through a concept known as “Hefzosehat” (maintaining health). Teaching people how to maintain the fundamentals of self-care is a medical practitioner’s job before anything else.

Traditional medicine is institutionalized among Iranians, said Khoda-Doost adding that self-care is basic human nature and “we have our Islamic culture endorsing it.” Integrating traditional medicine into everyday health care is important.

Financialtribune.com