Mon, 01 Jun 2009

Swiss vote in favour of complementary medicine

BERN (NNA) – The Swiss have voted significantly in favour of a greater recognition of the role played by complementary medicine. In a referendum on 17 May, more than two thirds of those voting (67 percent) expressed their support for the proposition that alternative forms of treatment should be formally recognised in the Swiss constitution.

The new constitutional provision now makes it incumbent on the federal and cantonal authorities to ensure that complementary medicine is “fully taken into account.”

The referendum concerned anthroposophical medicine, classic homoeopathy, neural therapy, phytotherapy and traditional Chinese medicine.

Reporting the result, NZZ Online said the new constitutional norm was intended to ensure that complementary medicine is better integrated into the health care system and is better coordinated with conventional medicine. “Now it is largely up to parliament to decide how the popular will should be implemented in concrete terms – in training for example – and how much money is to be spent on it,” NZZ Online said.

One of the demands in the referendum was that complementary medicine should once again be covered by the basic health insurance provision. Health minister Pascal Couchepin introduced legislation in 2005 which removed these five types of medical treatment from basic health insurance.

“This clear statement of support by the people for holistic medicine, which puts the focus back on the individual, will also significantly strengthen the position of anthroposophical medicine in the Swiss health care system,” Herbert Holliger, chief executive of “anthrosana”, the Swiss association for anthroposophically extended medicine, said.

The result of the Swiss referendum was also welcomed in Germany. The umbrella organisation for anthroposophical medicine in Germany, DAMID, said in a statement that the referendum result in Switzerland reflected the support for complementary medicine in Germany. Studies in recent years had shown that the great majority of patients wanted an integrated holistic medical approach.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), both traditional medicine (TM) and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are of rapidly growing importance with regard to the health system and the economy.

In some Asian and African countries, eighty percent of the population depend on traditional medicine for primary health care. In many developed countries, seventy to eighty percent of the population has used some form of alternative or complementary medicine, the WHO says.

Herbal treatments were the most popular form of traditional medicine, and were highly lucrative in the international marketplace: annual revenues in Western Europe reached five billion US dollars in 2003-2004. In China sales of products totalled 14 billion US dollars in 2005. Herbal medicine revenue in Brazil was 160 million US dollars in 2007, according to WHO figures.

Indeed, a WHO study has found that in many parts of the world expenditure on TM/CAM in general is not only significant, but growing rapidly. In Malaysia, an estimated 500 million US dollars are spent annually on this type of health care, compared to about 300 million US dollars on allopathic medicine. In the USA, “total 1997 out-of-pocket CAM expenditure” was estimated at 2,700 million US dollars. In Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, annual CAM expenditure is estimated at 80 million, 2,400 million and 2,300 million US dollars respectively, the WHO reports in its “Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005”.

END/nna/cva

Item: 090601-01EN Date: 1 June 2009

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