The World Health Organization (WHO) is preparing to launch the world's most comprehensive digital knowledge repository for traditional, complementary and integrative medicine. The Traditional Medicine Global Library (TMGL) will be released in December 2025 at the upcoming WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine in New Delhi, India.
Supporting traditional medicine integration
Although 170 WHO Member States report the use of some form of traditional medicine, it has often been underrepresented in scientific and policy discussions. The TMGL seeks to change that. By collecting, preserving and sharing diverse sources of information on traditional, complementary and integrative medicine from different knowledge bases on a global scale, and ensuring equitable access, it aims to support learning and decision-making processes. The library also addresses the call of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034 to foster a strong evidence base for traditional medicine, based on context-sensitive and holistic research approaches, and ensuring respect for Indigenous knowledge systems.
"It should be our joint effort to build a global repository for traditional medicine," said Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, at the G20 Ministers of Health Meeting, Gandhinagar, India, 18 August 2023
An extensive knowledge hub
The library will be significant in size and scope. In the first half of 2025, the platform has integrated over 1.5 million records spanning evidence maps, journals, multimedia collections, policies and regulations. It has also established six interconnected regional portals and 194 dedicated country pages featuring key resources and research analytics.
The TMGL is expanding access to health information and evidence not only through its global collections but also by curating relevant content in dedicated thematic pages, including traditional midwifery, Ayurveda, anthroposophical medicine, integrative oncology and integrative paediatrics.
The first thematic page to be developed covers traditional midwifery in the Americas. As part of a partnership between the Government of Canada and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the page now features a multimedia collection of powerful testimonies from Afro-descendant and Indigenous midwives across Latin America. It also includes the regional normative framework on traditional midwifery, which is currently being expanded and curated by PAHO's Equity, Gender, Human Rights and Cultural Diversity team in collaboration with BIREME/PAHO/WHO's librarians, thereby grounding these ancestral practices within a supportive policy context.
In addition, TMGL's Evidence Maps collection continues to grow, now featuring a "Interculturality in Health" map and a "Meditation and Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Clinical and Health Conditions" map. Maps on Ayurveda and yoga are in development for future inclusion.
Meanwhile, the scope of country pages is being expanded to cover a broader range of content; for example, from integrative and complementary health practices to folk medicine in Brazil. These enhanced country pages will serve as a comprehensive hub of resources, including regulations, databases, podcasts and multimedia collections.
The TMGL will become part of Hinari , one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. Hinari is hosted on the Research4Life platform, which provides free or low-cost access to academic and peer-reviewed content to institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Incorporating the TMGL will allow broader reach and access to traditional medicine knowledge.
Finally, in parallel, a new version of the Traditional Medicine Research Analytics platform is in development, offering deeper analysis into the global and regional scientific landscape of traditional medicine.
Together, these initiatives reinforce WHO's commitment to making traditional, complementary and integrative health knowledge more accessible, interconnected and impactful for communities and policy-makers.
