Promotion of all medicines, modern and traditional, must be adequately regulated. Promotion claims in advertising and packaging about any product must be complete, accurate, true and substantiated. The WHO ethical criteria for drug promotion needs to be strengthened, including a more extensive integration of tradtional medicines. Pharmacists need adequate, quality and independent information about traditional medicines. Without it, they do not adequately or safely meet consumer needs for information from their pharmacists.
Consumers deserve access to quality, effective and safe medicines in a timely manner.
Consumers should be active in calling for testing procedures that are appropriate for traditional medicines. We know that the active ingredient analysis has limitations in the case of traditional medicines. For example, it takes too long and it will likely miss cases where traditional medicines are effective because of how they are combined. If consumers are going to have health care systems that meet their needs, traditional healers, health practitioners and dispensers must learn how to communicate with each other and harmonise their health care delivery based on mutual respect. Meeting these needs requires the direct, substantive and ongoing participation of consumers in policy formulation and implementation, in regulation and in the provision of information.