New WHO disease document has chapter on traditional medicine

Though millions of people use traditional systems of medicine the world over, earlier versions of the International Classification of Diseases had not dealt with traditional medicine

For the first time ever, the World Health organisation has included in its disease manual a chapter on conditions that can be treated using traditional  medicine.

A WHO statement on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 11 said that the chapter “refers to disorders and patterns which originated in ancient Chinese Medicine and are commonly used in China, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere around the world. This list represents a union set of harmonized traditional medicine conditions of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean classifications. For an extended list of traditional medicine conditions, please refer to the International Classification of Traditional Medicine (ICTM).” As had been unveiled in a draft in December last year, ICD has also categorised gaming as an addiction.

Gaming disorder is defined as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.

Though traditional systems of medicine are used by millions of people across the world including in India, earlier versions of ICD had not described conditions that can be treated by these systems. This is significant because ICD is also used by health insurers whose reimbursements depend on ICD coding. This may pave the way in some years for traditional medicine procedures to be covered by insurance.

The ICD is the foundation for identifying health trends and statistics worldwide, and contains around 55 000 unique codes for injuries, diseases and causes of death. It provides a common language that allows health professionals to share health information across the globe. ICD-11, which has been over a decade in the making, provides significant improvements on previous versions. For the first time, it is completely electronic and has a much more user-friendly format. And there has been unprecedented involvement of health care workers who have joined collaborative meetings and submitted proposals. The ICD team in WHO headquarters has received over 10 000 proposals for revisions.

ICD-11 will be presented at the World Health Assembly in May 2019 for adoption by Member States, and will come into effect on 1 January 2022. “The ICD is a product that WHO is truly proud of,” says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “It enables us to understand so much about what makes people get sick and die, and to take action to prevent suffering and save lives.”