This 5-year Wellcome Investigator Award (2017-2022) explores the regulation of traditional and alternative medicines, in Europe and Africa, historically and in contemporary contexts.
It interrogates the challenges that regulators face in determining the boundaries of legitimacy in healthcare, and how to organise practices that fall outside of biomedicine. Our approach is socio-legal and cross-jurisdictional.
It focuses on three sub-regions (and six case studies) where policy conversations have been particularly intense, and current regulatory systems remarkably varied: Western Europe (France/England); West Africa (Ghana/Senegal) and the West Indian Ocean (Mauritius/La Reunion).
The project’s key goals are to:
- Critically assess the effects of contrasting regulatory frameworks on traditional and alternative medical practices, and their position in public health systems
- Consider how regulation can address the challenges raised by traditional and alternative medicines in a fair, effective and sustainable manner
- Foster new conversations across academia and policy on relevant experiences, strategies and ways forward
