Evidence-based validation remains the biggest challenge for global acceptance of traditional medicine systems. Examine this in the context of BRICS's new Expert Working Group on TCIM.

Traditional medicine enjoys wide popular use but limited clinical legitimacy, because its knowledge is largely experiential rather than trial-generated. The 16th BRICS Health Ministers' Meeting (Chandigarh, 23–24 July 2026), under India's Chairship, for the first time carried a dedicated section on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM) and endorsed a new Expert Working Group [1][3] — a direct institutional response to this validation deficit.

Why validation is the core barrier

• Methodological mismatch: individualised, multi-ingredient therapies fit poorly into single-molecule randomised trial design, weakening acceptance by regulators and insurers.
• Fragmented evidence base: research is scattered across national systems — Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, African traditional medicine — with little shared methodology, so findings rarely travel [2].
• Quality and safety concerns: absence of harmonised standards for raw material, dosage and adverse-event reporting sustains doubts about safety.

How the Expert Working Group addresses it

• Its mandate explicitly covers research and evidence generation and clinical validation, alongside multi-country studies and shared research methodologies [2].
• Digital knowledge platforms, repositories and databases are to pool dispersed evidence across the nine member states [1][2].
• Quality and regulatory standards plus capacity building and academic exchange — scholarships, faculty and student mobility — build the researcher base validation requires [1].
• It is anchored to the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034 and the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, aligning BRICS work with global scientific norms rather than creating a parallel standard [2].

Limitations

• The Group functions through consensus-based Terms of Reference, not a binding instrument, so standards remain voluntary [1].
• Protection of traditional and indigenous knowledge [1] must be reconciled with the open data-sharing that validation demands.

Validation is therefore less a scientific impossibility than an institutional gap, and the Expert Working Group supplies the missing architecture. If India converts its Ayush ecosystem and WHO partnership into rigorous, jointly-owned clinical evidence, BRICS can move traditional medicine from cultural heritage to a credible pillar of universal health coverage under SDG-3.