Nationalism, transnationalism, and the politics of "traditional" Indian medicine for HIV/AIDS

Traditional medicine. Complementary medicine. Alternative medicine. Herbal medicine. Complementary alternative medicine. These phrases have been flashing on radar screens of international public health organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and market investors since the late twentieth century and are gaining even more attention in the early twenty-first century. In May 2002 the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its first strategic program to monitor the use of traditional medicine worldwide and to make national policy recommendations for the regulation of traditional medicine. The guidelines for this strategy have been published in a WHO report, entitled WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005 (2002.) The impetus for this strategy came from the acknowledgment that the majority of people in the "developing world" use some form of traditional medicine, as well as from the fact that there has been a rapid increase in the use of nonbiomedical types of medical treatment in richer countries.