omniture

Statement from Traditional Medicine/WHO Western Pacific Regional Office

2008-07-17 08:06 3921

BEIJING, July 17 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ --

(Logo: http://www.prnasia.com/sa/20061102095006-51.jpg )

-- Acupuncture has become a global therapeutic method for the past

decades. There are differences among Member States of up to 25% of

acupuncture point locations. In recent years, WHO's Western Pacific

Regional Office, in collaboration with selected Member States,

initiated efforts to standardize acupuncture points. WHO convened

11 meetings on this topic from 2003 to 2006. The first meeting held

in 2003 involved experts from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

As the work progressed, additional experts were invited to

participate in the standardization project, including experts from

Australia, Mongolia, Singapore, USA, UK, Viet Nam. This process

culminated in a meeting held in Tsukuba, Japan during which the

standard acupuncture points were unified. Of the 92 controversial

points, 86 were standardized and the experts agreed that further

scientific research on the 6 remaining controversial points be

conducted. The WHO standard acupuncture point locations in the

Western Pacific Region was published.

-- In relation to the launching of the publication in Seoul, Republic

of Korea, a newspaper article was published, erroneously mentioning

that WHO chose Korean acupuncture to standardize acupuncture point

locations.

-- In view of the above, we would like to stress that WHO does not

favour any one set of standard acupuncture points from the different

countries. The whole purpose of these meetings is to come up with a

unified set of standard acupuncture points and we hope that the

above incident does not in any way detract from this goal.

Source: World Health Organization
collection