Eugen Brysch, head of the German Foundation for Patient Rights in Dortmund, says that the government should regulate practitioners of alternative medicine more strictly.
In 2006 and 2007, the Ontario Canadaa) government announced that it would move forward in regulating practitioners of naturopathy, homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine/acupuncture under the Regulated Health Professions Act [ 18].
In line with recent World Health Organization recommendations, many jurisdictions are taking steps to regulate practitioners of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM).
The World Health Organization has called for member countries to increasingly regulate practitioners of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM), with the aim of increasing safety, quality and effectiveness of TCAM therapies worldwide [ 1].
Regardless, the practitioner 'worries' raised in our study hold perhaps greatest significance in relation to the palpable challenge of regulating TCAM practitioners and practices hitherto largely excluded from national health care systems worldwide.
Speaking on Newsnight Scotland, Paul Murray, whose Blue Knights Consortium recently failed in its attempts to buy Rangers, said: "Whoever regulates insolvency practitioners, I think, has to look at this as a matter of urgency.
Regulating such practitioners and practices becomes quite difficult.
The Traditional Health Practitioners' Act of 2007 was passed to regulate TH practitioners.
However the longer term issue of regulating similar practitioners and their practices was also identified as a concern.
In many cases, however, the impulse to lobby governments to regulate TCAM practitioners has arisen from within the occupational groups themselves, as exemplified in our previous studies involving naturopaths, homeopaths and Chinese medicine practitioners in the Canadian province of Ontario [ 4, 7– 10].
