Alternative Medicines Summit - an Australian first

Australia's first Alternative Medicines Summit was held in Canberra late last year.

The Summit, convened by the Minister for Health and Family Services, the Hon. Dr Michael Wooldridge, was aimed at freeing up access to alternative treatments for seriously ill people.

During last year's election campaign, the Coalition said it recognised a significant proportion of Australians were seeking alternatives to mainstream therapeutics. It agreed that provided alternative medicines met appropriate safety standards, there would be no obstacles to accessing them.

In opening the Alternative Medicines Summit at Old Parliament House on 16 October, Dr Wooldridge said that in Government, he continued to value the insights and policy contributions health care providers offered "from any perspective".

"Indeed, quite often a 'medical' perspective may not be wholly appropriate to the complete consideration of the health care needs of Australians," he said.

"The very fact that 'alternative' treatments were recognised in our core health policy statement is groundbreaking in itself.

"For, I think, this is the very first time a major political party not only acknowledged the existence of so-called alternative health practice, it also acknowledged that such practice has an integral role to play in providing the full range of health care options to Australians."

The meeting gave representatives of natural and alternative medicine practitioner organisations, consumer organisations, illness support groups and industry a chance to identify any aspects of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 that prevented seriously ill people from gaining access to alternative medicines that were safe, but whose effectiveness had not been proven.

It had three key themes:

• the adequacy of patient access to medicines (the Personal Import Scheme and Special Access Scheme);
• practitioner access to medicines; and
• patient access to information about alternative medicines.

The Chair of the Summit, Mr Peter Sherwood (also Chair of the Traditional Medicines Evaluation Committee), presented the draft findings to the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Family Services, Senator Bob Woods, who closed the meeting.

The findings were later forwarded to the consultants conducting a review of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).