Thai Traditional Medicine (TTM) is the name given to methods and practices that have been handed down from monks and incorporate local knowledge of herbs. In Thailand, a century ago it was 'outlawed as quackery'[1] in favour of western medicine. It is now making a comeback.
The Seventh National Economing and Social Plan for 1992–1996 stated that "[t]he promotion of people's health entails the efforts to develop traditional wisdom in health care, including Thai traditional medicine, herbal medicine, and traditional massage, so as to integrate it into the modern health service system." Further, in 1993 the government of Thailand instituted the National Inststite of Thai Traditional Medicine, under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Health. The goal of the institute, expressed in its own literature, is to "systematize and standardize the body of TTM knowledge", to "gather knowledge, revise, verify, classify, and explain TTM knowledge", and to "compare and explain the philosophies and basic theories of TTM and to produce textbooks on TTM".[2]
The NITTM drafted a bill, the Traditional Thai Medicinal Wisdom Protection Bill, which was passed and became law in May 2000. This law regulates the access by non-Thai citizens to traditional Thai medicinal knowledge, and was intended to prevent TTM from being appropriated and then exploited by people outside of Thailand. The law was lauded by the local press, including by Sanitsuda Ekachai in a 1997-06-18 editorial in the Bangkok Post, and draw irate responses from the U.S. embassy.[2]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||