Health ministers keep traditional care on WHO agenda

Large-scale treatment and monitoring reduced lymphatic filariasis in affected communities.

Health workers used repeated medicine campaigns in areas where the infection had circulated.

WHO validation concerns a disease no longer being a public health problem, not a claim of zero possible infection.

On this date the Assembly agreed to extend WHO’s 2014–2023 strategy for two years, until 2025.

The extension allowed time to develop a new global policy approach to traditional medicine.

The 2023 resolution extended a strategy; it did not establish clinical effectiveness of particular traditional treatments.

Publication date: a PAHO story described how ancestral birth knowledge and modern clinical tools can be brought into dialogue.

Publication date: PAHO described working with midwives to recognize pregnancy and newborn danger signs and refer patients.

Publication date: the PAHO feature offered examples of traditional midwives collaborating with health professionals.

Publication date: a midwife from Colombia’s Pacific coast was described learning biomedical tools alongside ancestral practices.