A person-centred, integrative and holistic approach to healthcare would provide important public health benefits and should be considered crucial to protect and promote the universal right to the highest attainable standard of health. Until today in too many countries access to integrative healthcare is limited. In response, a group of healthcare organisations, practitioners, patients, and scientists from around the world is uniting around a shared vision of healthcare and launching the Peoples’ Declaration for Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Healthcare (TCIH).
‘’The healthcare we envision focuses on the whole person, is participative, respects individual choices, as well as cultural diversity and engages in respectful evidence-informed collaboration between all systems of healthcare.’’
TCIH focuses on the whole person and considers the individual in their physical, psychological, spiritual, social, and environmental context. While 80% of all countries world-wide report the use of traditional, complementary or integrative practices, this high demand is not yet reflected in national health systems. Issues that prevent access to TCIH are due to the lack of recognition and regulation, or a result of limited collaboration between different healthcare systems. The TCIH Declaration aims to highlight the demand for and benefits of TCIH – it promotes the regulation and highest educational standards with the goal of enhancing respectful collaboration between all healthcare professionals.
The Declaration will collect signatures of support from organisations and individuals worldwide over the course of one year to demonstrate the demand for TCIH to policy makers.
More than 87 health organisations and research institutes from 29 countries have already endorsed the Declaration. Join the call to action, sign, support and follow the Declaration milestones at https://www.tcih.org!
