A dialogue between practitioners of alternative (traditional) medicine and modern (western) medicine in Norway.

This paper tells about a 'dialogue group', consisting of alternative and modern health practitioners, that was started in Norway in 1989, how it works and what has been achieved up to now. WHO has strongly advocated promotion of cooperation between traditional and modern health practitioners. In Botswana, where one of the general practitioners in the group has practiced, 'United Health Committees' have been established aiming at creating a dialogue between the different types of health professionals. In industrialized countries little seems to have been done so far. Many patients in Norway, as in many other countries, consult ordinary doctors as well as alternative practitioners. In Norway, members of these two professions almost never meet, other than as opponents. They receive information about each other mostly through discontented patients who have been unsuccessfully treated by the other part. In this way practitioners get an insufficient and biased report of one another's practices, as well as an unrealistic and distorted picture. If patients know that both parts respect one another, then most of them dare to tell that they use both types of practitioners. Otherwise many patients conceal this.