Autumn  2013
 
ETCMA NEWSLETTER

 

Dear ETCMA Colleague,

 

Welcome to the second Newsletter of the ETCMA. This Newsletter has been designed to give you and your members more information on what is happening within the ETCMA and in member countries.  Please circulate this to all members in your association or register. If you would like to contribute to the next edition please contact Caoimhe at the following email address [email protected] . If you have any difficulty opening or reading this newsletter please let us know.

 

 News from the Executive Commitee of the ETCMA

The Executive Committee has had a busy year to date. Following on from the General Assembly in Krakow in February this year the EC agreed to have more face to face meetings. We have continued to have our Skype meetings but have had 3 face to face meetings which we have found to be very helpful.  We have almost finalised the Strategic plan and this will be available to all representatives shortly.

 The CEO and President  met with Dr Zhang Qi  from the WHO in Rothenburg  last May( please refer to report below). Another successful European School Leaders Day ( ESLD) was held in Rothenburg by the ETCMA in May. If you are aware of any schools that maybe interested in attending this day next year please be sure to forward their details to our Hon. Secretary  [email protected].  This day is suitable for School directors, teachers and education committee members from associations.

 Albert deVos as CEO has been busy representing ETCMA at various conferences. Tom Verhaeghe EC member will travel to china this week to represent ETCMA  There has been a lot of energy put towards developing a advocacy plan as you will see later in Tom Verhaeghe report. The EC have agreed that the Website will be upgraded and a new facebook page for ETCMA shall be launched shortly.  The venue for next years GA has been finalised for Nice France and information on this will be sent shortly  to the ETCMA representatives.  This is just a small sample of some of the work that has ben undertaken by the EC.  

 

 

ETCMA Advocacy Report by Tom Verhaeghe

 

 

 

 

  borg2

 

 

 

We have met with Euro-Commissioner Tonio Borg http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/borg/ twice this year, once in the European Parliament (CAM Interest Group meeting) and once at his cabinet. We are keen to follow up on these meetings by presenting him with data which he requested. Further details below.  We will continue our advocacy work with EUROCAM, who have invited more guests to their table.

We will provide ETCMA members with a paper that sums up the current evidence base for acupuncture. Rather than being a dry overview, it has been written specifically with political lobbying purposes in mind. As such it contextualizes scientific research into acupuncture, discusses EBM principles' applicability, and sums up the acupuncture evidence that we have from systematic reviews and meta-analyses regarding efficacy, comparative effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness. ETCMA members will also receive a powerpoint presentation that we hope will be useful for lobbying purposes in your own countries.

 

We wish to announce that the ETCMA Executive Committee has decided to leave EFCAM as of 23 July 2013. We felt that our interests were no longer represented by the umbrella organization that EFCAM is. More about that later on in the report.

 

 

 An overview and summary of the meetings that we have attended:-

 

EFCAM board meeting 13/02/13

 

EFCAM wishes to expand its scope of activity beyond DG Sanco http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/index_en.htm and is looking at DG Internal Market  Services http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/internal_market/index_en.htm

to help with registration and legislation for CAM. A feud between EUROCAM and EFCAM is developing, resulting in a ban on the President of EFCAM attending future EUROCAM meetings.

 

EUROCAM board meeting 03/04/13

 

Governance principles within EUROCAM: the agreement is to work on a consensus basis.

Since the group is only a stakeholder collaboration and not a regulated body with statutes and membership fees, the goal is to strive for consensus. The governing

principles were discussed Governing Principles( please click on this)

When a consensus is not reached, talks will go on until consensus is reached. If

not, then by majority vote.

 

We took note of an EPHA CAM working group.

The EC decided that the ETCMA should become a member of EPHA and we have since applied for membership, which ought to be approved soon.

 

WHO meeting in Rothenburg 09/05/13

 

Dr Zhang Qi of the WHO first met with the President and CEO of ETCMA in private, followed by a meeting with all ETCMA delegates.

(See notes from that meeting below).

 

EFCAM board meeting 29/05/13

 

We discussed DG Sanco policy: 'Investing in Health' Horizon 2020 http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/dyna/enews/enews.cfm?al_id=1348

This policy is a reaction to the economic crisis in the EU. This lists priorities in

health policy: prevention, chronic diseases, healthy ageing, cost-effectiveness,

... to improve productivity in the EU.

 

Commissioner Borg himself addressed the Health Policy forum on April 9 (quite exceptionally)

see http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/borg/docs/speech_eu_health_policy_forum_09042013_en.pdf because it seems he really wants to push his 'Investing in Health' policy.

 

ETCMA might have an opening here and will try to present the evidence base for acupuncture for chronic pain, cost-efficiency etc to Mr Borg as soon as we can.

 

EFCAM had decided to no longer go to the EUROCAM meetings. The ETCMA decided that they felt they wanted to continue meetings with EUROCAM, which forced EFCAM to reconsider its position. EUROCAM had sent out invitations to seven organizations (including the ETCMA), and EFCAM decided to send two representatives to the EUROCAM meetings.

KrY decided to leave EFCAM from this meeting onwards because of poor finances.

 

EUROCAM meeting with Stefano Soro, Head Medicinal Products DG SANCO 05/06/13

 

Ton Nicolai (ECH) started the meeting by saying that he wanted to expand on the

points from the CAMbrella Roadmap (as summarized here: http://www.echamp.eu/news/newsletter/newsletter-archive/2012/december/the-roadmap-for-european-cam-research.html

Stefano Soro (SR) responded by saying that he was well aware of CAMbrella, and the main points from the CAM Conference, and he immediately added that his agency had no new initiatives regarding CAM, nor did his colleagues from DG SANCO.

 

EUROCAM hoped that our concerns would be made known to all decision makers involved and SR assured us that he would present all the main points from the meeting upwards and laterally:-

 

1. Unequal access to CAM health care (mainly accessed by people from higher social classes).

SR: no new initiatives planned, also not for homeopathic medicines.

 

Herbert Schwabl (HS) did a short speech on the ineffectiveness of the existing legislation of herbal products. SR wants to make the existing legislation work and feels no need to add on new legislation. He was unimpressed by the comment that different countries have different rules. He later said that if certain medicinals (not food supplements) are unavailable in a certain country but forbidden in another country, we should notify that country and could notify him to let that member state know that they are restricting access to a medicinal available in other EU countries = infringement of consumer law.

HS mentioned the HMPC  http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/about_us/general/general_content_000264.jsp

 

several times and Walburg Marić-Oehler (ICMART) repeatedly asked for a response from SR to become more active on the regulation of herbal medicinals. SR was a bit reluctant but when he was informed that his predecessors sometimes went to the HMPC meetings he said he would look into it. Reports of their meetings can be found here

 

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2. To tie in with specific Health Projects, Stephen Gordon (ECCH) talked about addressing anti-microbial resistance with homeopathic medicinals, and SR said that any serious data of efficacy to reduce use of antibiotics would be looked at seriously by all involved. See

 

http://www.epha.org/a/5501

and http://www.euro.who.int/en/who-we-are/governance/regional-committee-for-europe/past-sessions/sixty-first-session/documentation/working-documents/wd14-european-strategic-action-plan-on-antibiotic-resistance

 

and http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/antimicrobial_resistance/Pages/index.aspx

 

And if any ETCMA member knows of data that Chinese Herbal Medicine reduces use of antibiotics, please do send along the info as we can contact SR directly

with this.

 

Off the record he seemed to understand that CAM has a place in the health field.

He asked very specific questions and seemed to focus on efficacy of medicinals.

Cost-effectiveness was less of a concern for him, but all the more to the EU politicians.

He was very interested to find out that several countries have EBM guidelines on

CAM as he did not know this.

 

EUROCAM board meeting 18/06/13

 

Tour de table. New members at the table are EFO http://www.efo.eu/portal/

looking for promotion of osteopathy;  EURAMA http://www.ayurveda-association.eu/

 

: few hundred members, all MDs practising Ayurvedic medicine; ANME http://www.anme.info/en/

 

: wants to see if there can be a common understanding of CAM, including non-doctors practising CAM. Regular members IVAA: mainly interested in CAMDOC alliance, wants to see if there can be cooperation with patient organizations and other trained CAM practitioners; ECPM: does not want to focus on quarrels; EFCAM wants to see the President of EFCAM present at the table and acknowledges that there have been tensions but that cooperation should be possible; EHTPA: preferably no egos, only here for the doing; ECH: Ton Nicolai is coordinating EUROCAM until a structure is approved. Since the whole group wants to find a common ground for everyone to participate it is suggested that everyone takes home the EUROCAM booklet please

click on this), and insert and submit changes to the whole group. Deadline

for submitting: 1st Sept. 

If any of you have any suggestions regarding the contents of the booklet, send us

an email.

 

Vinjar Fnnebhttp://en.uit.no/ansatte/organisasjon/hjem?p_menu=42374&p_dimension_id=88112

 

http://nutritionandhealthconf.org/formalbio_vfonnebo.html

did a presentation on a post-CAMbrella research group: European CAM research and competence centre. This research group is interested in closer cooperation with EUROCAM, as they represent the largest politically active CAM group in Europe.

Research on specific modalities of CAM and on its working mechanisms is not included in the CAMbrella research report, and this is one of the reasons Vinjar came to this meeting. He would like to connect more with producers etc. that can help fund research. And contribute to our practice, evidence base etc. He made the remark that they would like to produce evidence that has external validity. They have experienced statisticians that should try to accommodate the needs of the interest groups (and e.g. allow for individualized treatments). This group applied twice for EU funding in 2012, and failed on both occasions. Getting even one project funded with EU money could install regular 'calls' for CAM research projects. In Norway they have started a project called 'clinical quality registry' for CAM, and have sent out questionnaires to the Norwegian acupuncture society, among others. Details on this are to follow.

Purpose is to build 'systematic experience'.

There was a proposal to write a joint letter to DG Research and ask for a meeting

with them in September.

 

European Parliament Interest Group Meeting  on CAM 27/06/13

 

The EU Parliament CAM Interest group met on the topic of "CAM: an Investment in Health". It was co-chaired by MEP Alojz Peterle and MEP Sirpa Pietikainen. Approximately 60 people were present. The Keynote speaker was Health Commissioner Mr. Tonio Borg.

It was the first time that a Health Commissioner has attended a CAM Interest Group meeting in the Parliament. Mr Borg declared himself a believer in CAM and said that he regularly used Chinese Medicine. He said that the prejudices about CAM should be removed, that people should be allowed to choose their own healthcare and that providers should have free movement to practise anywhere in the EU. He spoke of the financial pressures of health systems to do more with fewer resources and that in this context sustainable and thus cost-effective treatments and anything that can produce better outcomes at lower cost was welcome. Mrs Pietikainen and Mr Peterle made a number of suggestions for future actions: perhaps a unified umbrella for professional training, to get more data about cost-benefits, to look for possibilities in existing legislation for regulation but to also push for own regulation, and perhaps a new and bigger conference next April/May than the one organized last October.

 

A report on this event can be read in the Parliament Magazine, page 43 http://www.theparliament.com/digimag/issue373

 

or click over the pdf file just here CAM

Commissioner Borg's full speech can be read here: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/dyna/borg/speeches_en.cfm

 

 

EFCAM meeting with Commissioner Borg 12/07/13

 

We met with Comm. Borg at his own cabinet. The full EFCAM report from that meetingis attached here EFCAM

We had prepared an overview of evidence for acupuncture, including cost-effectiveness, to present to the Health Commissioner. EFCAM however denied us that opportunity as they wanted this meeting to be of a general, introductory nature.

The Commissioner mentioned again that he is an ally and that he receives regular treatments in the Chinese medicine clinic in Malta. He also repeated his stance on cost-effectiveness being a major focus point for the (European) healthcare of the future. When asked who we should send our data to, the Commissioner stated that we are welcome to send the data to his cabinet, because they know best whom to forward it to.

 

We are preparing a dossier that serves the political needs of both Mr. Borg and

the ETCMA.

 

We hope to soon be able to present it to his cabinet.

 

EFCAM board meeting 23/07/13

 

At the beginning of this meeting the ETCMA announced that we would leave EFCAM as of this meeting. Following recent events, we felt that EFCAM was no longer a forum where our interests could best be represented. We bear no ill feeling towards EFCAM and hope to be working with them in the future, maybe through EUROCAM.

 

Although we acknowledge the work that EFCAM has done over the year, we felt there were moments of undemocratic decision-taking; and since EUROCAM now has many more members than EFCAM we have decided to focus our efforts on strengthening our own political advocacy work whilst continuing in EUROCAM.

 

 

 

 

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CommisionerBorg
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ETCMA AND WHO MEETING IN ROTHENBURG GERMANY MAY 2013 

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Albert deVos CEO ETCMA, Jasmine Uddin President ETCMA and Dr Zhang Qi WHO

 

 

 

 

Following the success of the collaboration between the WHO and ETCMA in December 2012 in collecting data for a WHO survey, Dr Zhang Qi was invited to the TCM congress in Rothenburg. Dr Zhang Qi is the Coordinator for the Traditional and Complementary Medicines Unit of the WHO. Albert de Vos (CEO of the ETCMA) and Jasmine Uddin (President ETCMA) formally met with Dr Zhang and Lucy Dean on Thursday 9th May 2013 for a private meeting. Both agreed it was helpful to meet with him and that ETCMA would continue to liaise with WHO. Following this private meeting all ETCMA representatives and some board members from member associations had a group meeting with Dr Zhang.

 

The WHO wants to engage with more non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Dr Zhang is working on a ten year global strategy for Traditional Medicine in the WHO.

 

The WHO is also working on the classification of Traditional Medicine with its International Classifications of Traditional Medicine (ICTM) unit.

 

As the WHO has not published the data they collected from the ETCMA they were not free to present a full report of this data at Rothenburg.

 

The following notes were taken by Caoimhe McGlinchey and Maria Jeskanen on Dr Zhang's presentation:

 

WHO are hoping to engage more with NGOs.

 

Dr Zhang thanked all associations for their support with the information that was requested for the survey.

The UK and Germany demonstrated the best coherence of data (ie greater congruence between data from various sources).

 

Dr Zhang is going to launch the WHO ten year global strategy on Traditional Medicine by the end of 2013 and early 2014.

 

WHO is also working on the International Classification of Traditional Medicine and is trying to mobilise funding in Europe for this.

The question remains about how the classification will be used and by whom and the WHO would welcome our feedback on this.

 

ICDII 2015 Classification of Traditional Medicine

 

Launching global strategy on traditional medicine 2014.

 

WHO wants to recognise the real situation that exists in countries by identifying the providers and users and which modalities are being used, as well as defining modalities eg Chinese medicine / Ayurveda.

 

What funding in research education is available in your country?

 

What resources/ research/ sustainability is there for traditional medicine - WHO are developing guidelines on research / evidence base.

 

Soft study policy.

 

Formulate regulation on products, providers, practitioners and clinics.

 

Clearly some member countries are over regulated and some are under regulated.

 

Benchmarking 9 therapies with basic training but now need to develop benchmarks on practice of these therapies.

 

WHO is working on methodology for TM and technical guidance on drug /herb interactions.

 

Encourage appropriate access to primary healthcare.

Currently access varies from continent to continent.

 

WHO wants to work with all stakeholders and is collaborating with ISO too.

 

Dr Zhang also thinks that partial integration is most possible.

 

The term traditional medicine may sound outdated and it would be good to use the word complementary medicine instead.

 

Every country should point out /find out what is the need for complementary medicine in each country.

 

We should all contact the local WHO office to get help and support from them in

different matters like speaking with the government.

 

 

 

 

Executive Committee of the ETCMA ALbert, Caoimhe, Tom, Yves and Dr Zhang from the WHO

 

 

 

 

 

           
ETCMA and WHO meeting Rothenburg 2013

 

  
 
 

 

The British Conference of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine will take place this coming  weekend of the 20 - 22 September 2013, at the Beaumont Estate in Windsor. To book your place and to find out more, please visit our conference website http://conference.acupuncture.org.uk/

To get a sneak preview of what to expect, please click here

 

The British Conference of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine 2013

 

 

 

The British Conference of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine 2013
The British Conference of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine 2013

This year's conference offers ETCMA members the chance to connect with the British and International acupuncture community and learn new skills from some of the world's most eminent practitioners. BAcC will also be celebrating 20 years of its journal EJOM. You will leave the conference brimming with ideas and enthusiasm and we look forward to seeing you there!

 

 

BAcC has joined the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance (ARMA), an umbrella

 

body providing a collective voice for the musculoskeletal (MSK) community in the

UK. ARMA has 40 members - from patient organisations, healthcare professional

bodies and major research charities, and covers the whole spectrum of MSK conditions, including rare disorders. BAcC hopes being part of ARMA will ensure BAcC acupuncturists are considered within the NHS- for example ARMA is running a year-long project to support the development of MSK clinical networks in the NHS and have successfully lobbied for a national NHS MSK clinical director.

 

In reviewing our strategy at its mid point, there is a new emphasis on the importance of BAcC members' educational standards. The public need to understand that BAcC professional acupuncturists not only have a Traditional East Asian Medicine background but a degree. Later this year, BAcC will also be rebranding - with the aim of demonstratinga shift in focus to one promoting BAcC acupuncturists, BAcC's traditional heritage and the quality of our professional educational backgroundand regulator. BAcC is also lobbying for the scheme to allow our 3,000 members to be re-imbursed from key private health insurers, and recognition by the National Blood Service for blood donation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Report from AGTCM Germany and the TCM Kongress Rothenburg 2013
 

 

 

1. TCM Kongress Rothenburg 2013:

 

We are very happy to report that this year's Congress was a great success overall. Financially we are happy that we did not run over and make a deficit.

We want to thank all of you who have been supporting us, especially those who gave us financial support, but also those who helped with the programme, the European School Leaders Day and those who ran advertisements for us. We want to apologize if there was the feeling that we did not thank all of those sponsors enough at the International meeting; we tried to show our thankfulness at the Buffet Party by giving you all credit.

 

Due to last year's loss, we had to change our programme a little bit this year; we are not totally happy about the results and we promise that next year the food will be better at the buffet party and we will think about the food and dinner situation  for the international meeting.

 

The AGTCM will continue to support the ETCMA members by giving their members and their Boards special rates for the congress. 

For example an ETCMA Member could save up to 140 Euros for a 5 Day Ticket. We had 230 ETCMA Member participants in 2013! You can do the maths - and see how much we value that your members have the possibility to come to the TCM Kongress Rothenburg.

 Therefore we are once again very thankful, when you and your organisation supports the TCM Kongress Rothenburg!

 We will continue to reorganize the TCM Kongress Rothenburg for the next years. For example it will be possible in 2014 to book all courses in advance, even those during the core Congress (Thursday-Friday- Saturday), so that nobody has to standin front of a full course. We are also looking into arranging the whole congressmore clearly so that newcomers have a better overview.

 

So you see it's a never ending story and task.

 

2. Acupuncture and TCM Awareness Week.

 

We now are in full swing for our first Acupuncture and TCM Awareness Week. To tellthe truth we are very happy that we are not involved at the moment in coordinatinga European Awareness week. This would have overstretched our possibilities. Foran organisation like ours, which has almost no administrative staff, a lotof work is done by volunteers, who also have to be coordinated.

 

Our week will take place in November and we are looking forward to seeing its results.

 

We still think it would be a great idea to plan such a pan European week in 2014

or 2015: The ETCMA should play a central role in this.

 

3. Anniversaries 2014: 60 Years AGTCM, 45 Years TCM Kongress Rothenburg

 

Next year we will have our big anniversaries: At the moment we are planning how to celebrate and organize this. We shall probably have a jubilee celebration at the Congress 2014. If you have an idea or you want to be part of the celebration in any way, please contact us so that we can include your ideas in our planning.

 

 


 

  
CFMTC
 
   

Here are the latest information from France which we would like to share with our european partners in the ETCMA :

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After our Quality Manual Professional Reference Document was published

 

http://www.cfmtc.fr/images/pdf/manuel_qualite.pdf

  

and given to the French government, we established our first contact with representatives of the authorities. We were welcomed by the principal private secretary of Ms Carlotti, who is a delegate minister in the Health Ministry. A second appointment allowed us to meet an adviser of the Health Ministry. It appears from both interviews that our action must mainly focus on rallying the population and all the elected representatives, which implies that we should set up a communication and lobbying plan.

 

The first step of such a plan was Yves Giarmon's (co-president of CFMTC) participation in a TV programme on a national channel, where he debated with the representative of an association of MD-acupuncturists. This program allowed him to communicate a certain number of messages toward the general public.

 

In September this year the Confederation will again organise combined tests of

the DNMTC (Diplme National de MTC - National Diploma of TCM). The written and practical tests will gather together more than 200 candidates. The advantages of this diploma are that this is to be a combined one and that there will be blind marking for the written test. For the practical test, the candidate is marked by teachers who don't belong to the school where the student was taught.

 

As a reminder, the CFMTC will organize its 3rd National Congress in Aix-en-Provence on November 9th and 10th, 2013. Please click on the link below for more information

 

 

 CFMTC Conference

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

           
 
CHINESE MEDICINE CLAIMS ITS RIGHTS IN THE CRECH REPUBLIC
This article was recently published in a Czech Newspaper following an interview from ETCMA representative and President of the  Czech Association( Czech Chamber of TCM) Jiri Bilek

PRAGUE A new profession: the Practitioner of the Traditional Chinese Medicine.
This will be the new title of a person, who would graduate from a specialised Chinese Medicine school, with not less than three years study and proficient in the basic understanding of  western medicine. Most importantly they will have studied Traditional Chinese Medicine  diagnostic and treatment methods. This is an aim of the association of Traditional Chinese medicine experts (CCTCM).
   According to their president, Jiri Bilek there should be an accredited education  system that would correspond to university level. At the moment, though, Traditional Chinese medicine is practiced in a "grey zone" without any regulation. Anybody can practice without any control whether he/she knows what they are doing.
   "There are basics of TCM introduced to medical students at the Charles University in the  form of a selective subject, but it is far from enough to practice" says gynaecologist and acupuncturist Jiri Bilek. The minister of health, Martin Holcat is not against this training and practice. "I would see it, though, as a postgraduate education of the medical doctors".
The TCM association started a supportive petition aimed at  politicians and the authorities. "We want to define the basic educational criteria for professionals practicing TCM", says Jiri Bilek. "The model we promote is based on the European consensus. The education should not be shorter than three and half years and should cover Chinese medicine as well as basic of Western medicine."
   Traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced in our country over twenty years and is sought-after by a rising number of people. "It is because TCM not only offers a treatment of health problems, but also helps preventing them," says Bilek.
   The Czech Medical Chamber already accepts one of the traditional Chinese treatment methods - Acupuncture but acupuncture is only one of the treatment methods. The  Czech Chamber of TCM wants a whole field of the Traditional Chinese Medicine to be recognized. 
   "There is a place for an evidence based medicine in Europe" quotes the reserved vice-president of the Czech Medical Chamber Zdenek Mrozek. "That does not mean, though, that our Chamber should combat the methods of the Traditional Chinese medicine."
    The Ministry of Health supports the transfer of education in TCM from the Chinese universities to our country. A contract is currently being prepared for signing in regard to  the cooperation of Czech and Chinese universities.
  
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Some of the Items in this Issue
Executive Committee News
ETCMA Advocacy Report
ETCMA and WHO meeting
Recent Activities from the British Acupuncture Council
News from France