The alternative medicine practitioners of the country who are confident of offering cure for HIV/AIDS may get a major boost if an international model (Tanga Pilot Project) of scientific validation of traditional therapies gets replicated within the country. Since Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is an integral part of the Global Research Alliance (GRA), that is undertaking this validation process, alternative (indigenous) methods of AIDS treatment or management may get an official recognition if found scientifically effective.

The Tanga model is being validated in Tanzania, where there is a traditional herbal mix available for effective management of opportunistic infections, the AIDS patients are prone to. It is known that the proposal submitted by the Tanga AIDS Working Group to GRA, talks about extending the quality life of AIDS patients only through effective management of opportunistic infections. Scientists associated with the validation programme has said that the four or five extra years the patient can gain through this treatment can be utilised well for the treatment of the disease and thereby effect better control over AIDS.

According to scientists, GRA is attempting to extend the scope of Tanga Project soon.

Interestingly, several traditional practitioners, including ayurveda practitioners, naturopaths, homoeopaths, siddha practitioners and others have made several claims on the effectiveness of their medicines in prolonging the quality life of AIDS patients in India. There were even instances of legal interventions when some practitioners (Fair Pharma for instance) decided to promote their products by defying the existing drug regulatory laws of the country. The GRA move, to develop an internationally acceptable validation process for the traditional medicines would prove real help to such practitioners.

As Pharmabiz reported earlier, GRA is an alliance of Battelle Memorial Institute USA, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, Danish Technological Institute, Netherlands, SIRIM-Berhad, Malaysia, Technical Research Centre of Finland, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa and CSIR, India.

The programme involves collaboration of all member organisations in areas like development of validation processes, knowledge sharing platform and virtual coordination structure. While the knowledge sharing platform for the community of practice (scientists and traditional healers) will help them share and learn more, the virtual coordination structure would call for institutional arrangements for self organising the community of practice to coordinate the implementation of the road map for collaborative validation. The alliance thus seeks to develop unique and exciting locale-specific solutions to global problems through a technology fusion.