WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine

Context:

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the establishment of the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (WHO GCTM) in Jamnagar, Gujarat by signing a Host Country agreement between the Government of India and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO GCTM will be established in Jamnagar under the Ministry of AYUSH.
This would be the first and only global out posted Centre (office) for traditional medicine across the globe.

to position AYUSH systems across the globe
to provide leadership on global health matters pertaining to traditional medicine.
To ensure quality, safety and efficacy, accessibility and rational use of traditional medicine.
To develop norms, standards, and guidelines in relevant technical areas, tools and methodologies, for collecting data undertaking analytics, and assess impact. Envisage WHO TM Informatics center creating a collaborative of existing TM Data banks, virtual libraries, and academic and research institutes.
To develop specific capacity building and training programmes in the areas of relevance to the objectives and conduct training programmes in campus, residential, or web-based, and through partnerships with the WHO Academy and other strategic partners.

The Hon’ble Prime Minister praised this initiative of WHO and mentioned that WHO GCTM would emerge as a center of global wellness, bolster evidence –based research, training and awareness for Traditional Medicine.
A Joint Task Force (JTF) is constituted for coordination, execution and monitoring of activities for the establishment of this Centre. JTF comprises representatives from the Government of India, Permanent Mission of India, Geneva and the World Health Organization.
Under the ambit of this, an interim office is being established at the ITRA, Jamnagar, Gujarat to execute the identified technical activities and planning of fully functional WHO GCTM.
The interim office is intended to deliver broadly on generation of evidence and innovation, artificial intelligence based solutions for traditional medicine, systematic reviews in collaboration with Cochrane, Global survey on traditional medicine data across WHO GPW 13 (Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019-2023) and sustainable development goals, traditional medicine socio-cultural and biodiversity heritage with a forward looking approach to sustainable development and management and cross-cutting functions, business operations and administrative processes for the establishment of main office of WHO GCTM.

Source: THE HINDU