New member Area on the Global Health Network: Traditional Medicine Research

For millenia, humans have depended on medicinal plants to treat their ailments. Traditional medicine is still mainstream in many parts of the world today. Scientific investigations have taken several different approaches:

- To understand which plants (or other treatments) people use to treat which illnesses, and how they use them (Medical anthropology and ethnobotany)

- To isolate and identify the key compounds in the plant (phytochemistry)

- To test plant extracts for their biological activity (plant pharmacology)

- To test whether herbal medicines are safe and effective in humans (clinical trials)

The Global Traditional Medicine website, part of the Global Health Network is organised around these five key areas, each of which is overseen by a separate expert panel. Like the other member areas across the Global Health Network, you can use this website to share you experiences, ideas and resources, and to ask questions. These member area will bring together resources and posts of interest to the various interest groups, as well as describing the overall aims for each of the groups.

http://globaltraditionalmedicine.tghn.org/