Ayurveda is formally accepted by the World Health Organisation as a very sophisticated traditional system. The term «traditional medicine» refers to ways of protecting and re-establishing health that already existed before the modern medicine.

The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicines (NCCAM), which depends on the National Health Institutes (U.S.A.) does recognise Ayurveda within the category of Main Alternative Professional Systems.

According to the NCCAM, each of the Main Professional systems complies with the following requirements: they have a theory of health and disease, an educational plan to teach their concepts, a material system to provide remedies and therapeutical elements, legal and economic rules that control their practice, cultural expectations concerned with the role of the medical system, as well as means to give a professional status to those professionals who approve of their use. A standardised specific professional training is received by those who use this type of alternative professional System, and they carry out their task in special institutions. There are several research works concerned with the causes of an illness and the outcome after follow up.

There are, traditionally, eight medical fields: general medicine, paediatrics and obstetrics, surgery, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, toxicology, virilisation or virility and rejuvenation and psychology.

Última actualización: 27/02/2007