The Integration of Alternative Medicine into Colombian Health Care Services

Objective: To demonstrate, through an analysis of literature, the progress being made towards integrating alternative and complementary medicine into the delivery of health care services in Colombia, pursuant to the worldwide trend in this respect, which is coherent with the WHO Strategy for 2002-2005. That strategy has four objectives: 1) integrate traditional medicine and alternative and complementary medicine; 2) promote the safety, effectiveness and quality of TM/ACM; 3) increase the availability and accessibility of TM/ACM, with an emphasis on the poorest population groups; and 4) encourage sound therapeutic use of TM/ACM by consumers and suppliers alike. Method: This is a descriptive study based on articles found in the Scielo, Bireme, Medline and Pubmedpara databases to assess ACM integration into health care services in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Results: The use of ACM has become common throughout the world. Patients, physicians and other health care professionals regard it as an option to be used as complementary therapy or another way to treat their patients. Conclusion: A health-care model that includes ACM can offer advantages when it comes to more humanized care, the cost of medication and the use of highly complex services. Further work is needed to evaluate this integration and to develop academic and training instances in this field.