| Chinese medicine legislation forum |
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| Features | |
| Sunday, 21 November 2010 | |
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Chinese medicine in the UK will be regulated for the first time next April when a European directive comes into effect. Almost 2,500 qualified herbalists and Chinese medicine practitioners may lose their right to supply a wide range of medicines because the majority of processed Chinese medicines are currently not granted a licence by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
At the same time, practitioners of Chinese medicines are currently voluntarily regulated by the government, meaning that they are unable to prescribe unlicensed medicines, unlike statutorily regulated medical practitioners. Lobbying efforts to change Chinese medicine practitioners’ voluntary regulation status to statutory regulation since 2000 has achieved little satisfactory result to date. Under voluntary regulation, the inability to distinguish between qualified and unqualified practitioners is placing public safety at risk.
In the light of these imminent problems, Professor Man Fong Mei of Chinese Medical Council led a forum discussion this month, inviting all experts and practitioners in this field to discuss strategies and actions to solve this problem.
The Forum was attended by over 30 organisations with the participation of more than 100 individual doctors, scientists, patients and interested consumers. The session began with David Tredinnick MP expressing his concerns about this issue and his intention to raise them nationally and at the European Parliament.
Richard Woodfield, Group Manager for herbal policy at MHRA, gave his perspective at the forum also. He confirmed that while 170 applications for herbal medicines have been received, only 80 are granted, of which none are Traditional Chinese medicine. One reason that Chinese medicines have had little success passing the MHRA guidelines is because many Chinese medicines have little history of being sold on the British market, in comparison with other herbal medicines.
The Forum concluded with an announcement of the results of a post-forum poll on the views on the directive. The results showed that the majority of participants believed that the directive needs to be amended in order to fulfil its aim of protecting public health from the dangers of unregulated herbal medicines.
The results sent a strong message that the EU Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD) is not suitable for medicines of non-European traditions. It was also revealed during the Forum that the Department of Health’s decision on the regulation of “authorised healthcare professionals” of herbal medicine, acupuncture and Chinese Medicine will be announced shortly, which will decide the future of Chinese traditional medicines in the UK.
Cecily Liu
For more background information, see earlier story: http://www.dimsum.co.uk/features/the-future-of-chinese-medicine-in-the-uk.html
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