Jean-Pierre Georges Foucault is a former scientist who is used to dealing with fact and evidence. But when a friend became ill and had excruciating pain, he accompanied her to a traditional healer who, with the placing of his hands, managed to effect a reduction in the pain.

“As a scientific person, I don’t necessarily believe in such things, but there are some amazing healing skills that you can’t explain,” he told IPS.

Foucault is currently the honorary chairperson of the National Committee of Public Health and Bioethics of the Grand Orient de France, the largest Masonic organisation in France. This week he has been an observer as experts discuss “traditional medicine and its ethical implications” at the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The meeting of the organisation’s International Bioethics Committee (IBC) that began Monday has brought together a diverse range of participants from both developed and developing countries who wish to tackle the issue of how to regulate as well as learn from traditional medicine.

“Thanks to young doctors, recognition of traditional medicine is progressing a lot in France, because young practitioners think it can be complementary to conventional medicine,” Foucault told IPS.

France is considered by the United Nations to have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. For developing countries that have weak systems, traditional medicine can be both a blessing and a curse, however.

“In rural areas in Africa, most patients depend on traditional medicine, but a lot of these practitioners are not known for their charity,” said Dr. Alfred J. Sumani, acting executive secretary for the National Science and Technology Council in Zambia.

He told IPS that traditional healers sometimes use their patient’s illness to advertise their services, so “patient information is not confidential” – in contrast to the widely accepted notion that heathcare providers should protect their clients’ privacy. Practitioners may also use secretive methods to heighten their aura or power, he said.

States such as Zambia could improve the efficacy of traditional medicine by establishing formal institutions where courses in the subject are taught, Sumani said. Governments could also seek to “demystify” the medicine so that patients have a better idea of what they are being prescribed, he added.

“Patients shouldn’t have to think that you can only take a potion at high noon or turn your back to the moon for the medicine to be effective,” he told IPS.

But as UNESCO experts have pointed out, traditional medicine has existed for centuries and stood the test of time. “The challenge is now to establish bridges between traditional medicine and conventional medicine,” said Pilar Alvarez-Laso, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences and secretary-general of the IBC.

A country on the other side of the globe that has university courses in traditional medicine as well as clear regulation of the sector is Singapore, where the public largely accepts practices such as acupuncture, according to Dr. Sylvia Lim, head of the secretariat of the bioethics advisory committee there.

“Among the Chinese, there is acceptance of traditional medicine, especially among the older generation,” she told IPS. “The younger generation may have a few reservations though.”

Some might shiver at the thought of being pierced with needles, but acupuncture is offered at some hospitals in Singapore, and students can take a course in traditional Chinese medicine at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Shops selling traditional herbs and other remedies operate under official regulation for the most part.

While the Singapore model is attractive, many countries in Africa need to find their own solutions, said Dr. Monique Wasunna, assistant director (research) of the Nairobi-based Kenya Medical Research Institute.

For her, an important issue is the care of patients who suffer from some of the 17 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that the World Health Organisation has identified. These diseases include dengue, soil-transmitted helminths such as roundworms and hookworms, and elephantiasis.

“Neglected patients have no purchasing power. Neglected diseases lie outside the market,” said Wasunna in an address to the UNESCO meeting, which also focused on “non-discrimination and non-stigmatisation” in the treatment of the sick.

U.N. studies show that more than a third of the world’s population have no access to essential drugs and that half of these people live in the poorest areas of Africa. “They live in extreme poverty and they are voiceless,” Wasunna said.

For such patients, traditional healers are often the first line of care, but these practitioners are limited in what they can provide as some diseases require extensive surgery. By the time the patients get to modern health facilities, it is often too late, Wasunna told IPS.

“If we could be like some countries where modern medicine co-exists at the same level with the traditional, that would be good,” Wasunna said. “But in every situation, there are some who take advantage of the poor.”

Both Kenya and Zambia are putting together guidelines for traditional medicine, while trying to learn from “indigenous knowledge systems”. Other steps that can be taken internationally are detailed in a draft report presented during the Paris meeting, which has shown that the issues of bioethics “cannot be limited to the debates on human cloning, eugenics or euthanasia,” according to UNESCO.

The draft report recommends building bridges between modern and traditional medicines, and defends the idea that “every patient, in any part of the world, should be informed of the many existing treatments and should have access to the most efficient treatments,” the organisation says.

The report also contains action plans, with the experts inviting governments “to concentrate on the right of each human being to have access to quality care” while also respecting cultural diversity and pluralism.

Small farmers in Mexico, who receive little institutional support, are drawing on their traditional knowledge to deal with and adapt to climate change, experts say.

“Campesinos (peasants) have a strong tradition of expanding their territory, which makes them quite flexible” in dealing with new conditions, Fernando Briones, a researcher at the public Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), told IPS.

“But their traditional knowledge doesn’t always work. Adaptation is not a lineal process,” he said.

The academic carried out the study “Saberes y prácticas climáticas de los pueblos indígenas de México: los choles” (Climate wisdom and practices of the Chole indigenous people of Mexico), focusing on an indigenous community in the city of Tila in the southern state of Chiapas, one of the country’s poorest states.

He studied the farming practices and expertise of the Chole people, one of 62 native groups who make up between 12 and 30 percent of the country’s 112 million people (the smaller, official, estimate is based on the number of people who speak an indigenous language).

Describing some of the traditional practices, Briones said Mexico’s campesinos stagger the planting of their maize, beans, coffee and other crops. Some is done before the rainy season starts in June, a much larger part is based on the traditional calendar, and the remainder is done once the dry season has started. Another practice is to plant at different altitudes.

The region studied by Briones, where agricultural producers are mainly engaged in subsistence farming, frequently receives rainfall so heavy that it causes flooding and mudslides.

Indigenous people like María Solís grow native varieties of corn, which are more resistant to the impacts of climate change. Credit:Emilio Godoy/IPS

There are approximately five million campesino families in Mexico, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

Chiapas, which is exposed to torrential rains, drought, forest fires and deforestation, is one of the parts of Mexico most vulnerable to climate change.

“Communities have created local governance systems…They are the ones who decide on actions in response to climate change,” Pedro Álvarez, the head of biological resources and corridors in the Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), told IPS.

One of the projects carried out by CONABIO since 2008 in the 1.8-million-hectare Lacandon jungle, one of the most biodiverse areas in the country, has managed to reduce the deforestation rate from five to 0.5 percent, with the active participation of the local inhabitants.

The communities manage and care for the rainforest, for which they receive an annual payment for environmental services.

Mexico emits an estimated 709 million tons a year of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Of that total, Chiapas is responsible for some 32 million tons, mainly from soil use, deforestation and agriculture.

Chiapas is home to 4.8 million people, one million of whom are indigenous, according to INEGI.

“Adaptation is a gradual process of adjustment,” Briones said. “Some forms of adaptation are temporary migration, and a change in economic activities: campesinos go to urban areas and become construction workers, coming back only for harvest season.”

Farmers closely observe climate-related signs, such as the appearance of certain plants and insects, and the migration of birds, indicating the advance of the rainy season.

Briones’ study on the Chole (which means “people of the corn” in the Mayan tongue) Indians was carried out under the Risk and Vulnerability Network: Social Strategies for Adaptation and Prevention, made up of universities from Britain, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico and the Netherlands.

In many communities, farmers use agroecological practices such as organic fertilisers, recycled water, and crop diversification to avoid exhausting the soil.

A 2009 study, “El impacto del cambio climático en las tierras y sus características” (The impact of climate change on soils and its characteristics”, by the ministry of the environment and natural resources warns that 80 percent of the 30 million hectares of farmland in the country are highly vulnerable to climate change, which threatens national food security and the poorest segment of the population.

Poor campesinos will suffer the greatest difficulties in adaptation because they cannot afford crop insurance or new technologies that would give them access to information about planning crops and harvests.

Traditional knowledge will therefore fall short, because means of curbing erosion, boosting family income and maintaining soil organic matter are also needed.

“Strategies to foment sustainable production and sustainable management of natural resources is one approach that we are proposing for working in the region, to protect the rainforest,” Álvarez said. “Better measures are needed for communities to make improved use of natural resources.”

CONABIO has spent more than three million dollars on the project in the Lacandon jungle.

Briones said the issue went beyond the survival of an indigenous community, and had to do with the country’s food security.

“There is quite a lot of potential for adaptation, but to have a greater impact, essential questions must be resolved, such as the basic problems of the Mexican countryside” such as poverty, lack of financing, productivity problems, and a lag in technology, he said.