Complementary and alternative medicine in European countries—legislative framework

• Main Authors: Jovana Milenkovic, Sergey Bolevich, Gvozden Rosic
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hong Kong Gold Orchid Science and Technology Co., Limited 2020-04-01
• Series: Traditional Medicine Research
• Subjects: complementary and alternative medicine; european countries; methods of therapy; legal status; regulation; legislation
• Online Access: https://www.tmrjournals.com/tmr/EN/10.12032/TMR20190718125

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a set of different diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, as well as the use of natural products for the treatment of patients, derived from previously known traditional methods and enriched with modern scientific knowledge. The present article reviews the available data regarding the use of CAM and the legislation behind it in European countries. The use of CAM is recorded in Europe as a whole and varies between 10-70% of the population of individual European countries. At least 300,000 registered CAM providers have been identified in the European Union (EU), of which slightly more than half includes non-medical practitioners. The most practiced discipline is acupuncture, followed by homeopathy. CAM regulation and legislation in Europe is not precisely defined and is constantly striving to find a common approach. Since legal frameworks for CAM are not defined, each European country has its own regulations and legislation. In order to define universal legislation for CAM, the EU created the CAMbrella project, a project of the EU designed to find a unique system that would include the treatment of CAM in Europe. According to the data from CAMbrella, from 39 countries in the EU, 17 have general CAM legislations. The status of CAM in Europe is characterized by enormous heterogeneity in all aspects, including terminology, methods, prevalence and ultimately, legal status, regulations and legislation.