BIREME/PAHO and the Pre-Launch of the WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library – PAHO/WHO

Rio de Janeiro, October 17, 2025 (BIREME) – The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and its Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME) held the pre-launch of the World Health Organization Traditional Medicine Global Library (WHO TMGL) during the 3rd World Congress on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (3rdWCTCIM), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The WHO TMGL, an initiative led by BIREME and the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Center (WHO GTMC), in collaboration with other institutions and networks.

BIREME Director João Paulo Souza presented the new collaborative library to the event participants, including TCIM specialists and health professionals, seeking suggestions to further refine the platform before its official launch during the Second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine, to be held in India on December 2025. “The WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library will be a large multi-epistemic repository of knowledge to facilitate collaboration, research, and implementation of traditional, complementary, and integrative policies and practices that are all effective and safe and enable progress toward health,” explained.

It is a collaborative and decentralized digital tool designed to connect traditional knowledge, practices, and care systems from various regions of the world with national health systems, in dialogue with a contemporary scientific approach. This approach opens the possibility of enriching public health policies and practices by integrating different medical rationales based on criteria of safety, efficacy, and cultural relevance.

The Virtual Health Library of Traditional Complementary and Integrative Medicines (VHL TCIM) developed and coordinated by BIREME/PAHO/WHO was reference in the Americas for the development of the WHO TMGL, which used the experience and methodologies developed through this VHL to define its structure, content curation and planning of its expansion at a global level.

Access WHO TMGL news previously published in the BIREME Bulletin.

Thematic Pages: Traditional Midwifery

The library will feature thematic pages that will allow you to delve deeper into the content in specific areas. The first, presented during the WHO TMGL pre-launch event, is dedicated to Traditional Midwifery in the Americas, a collaborative effort with the Department of Social and Environmental Determinants for Health Equity (DHE) and BIREME/PAHO/WHO.

“Traditional midwifery represents one of the oldest and most profound expressions of human knowledge. It is a practice that has accompanied women, families, and communities through the most important moments in life: birth, the care of life, and the continuity of existence. Through this new section in the Global Library, PAHO seeks to recognize, make visible, and preserve the ancestral knowledge of traditional midwifery that, generation after generation, has contributed to maternal, newborn, and community health worldwide,” explained Gerry Eijkemans, Director of DHE.

The Traditional Midwifery Thematic Page is the tangible result of this collaboration, integrating editorial content with a literature review, testimonials from Indigenous and Afro-descendant midwives, multimedia resources, and links to regulatory frameworks and intercultural policies. 

This development exemplifies how co-creation between technical teams and communities can strengthen the visibility of traditional practices, promote intercultural dialogue, and serve as a replicable model for future WHO TMGL thematic pages.

“This was a unique opportunity to collectively validate the development of the Traditional Midwifery page at WHO TMGL, strengthening its cultural and technical relevance before its official launch,” said Mirelys Díaz, who is part of the team responsible for developing WHO TMGL at the Center.

Each thematic page will follow a standardized structure, organized into sections that combine contextual narrative, informational resources, and a dynamic space for news and events. The purpose is to connect scientific evidence with ancestral knowledge and community experiences, thus within the context of the innovations that characterize the information products and services developed and coordinated regionally by BIREME/PAHO/WHO.

traditional medicine global library