| 01 December 2010
At the beginning of November the WHO benchmarks for osteopathy were finally released after 3 years of delays. By now they are also available for download from the WHO website.
Unfortunately the document has been significantly changed compared to the consensus document that the osteopathic community had produced in 2007.
1. The new "benchmark" document is significantly shorter: only 18 out of 28 pages are dedicated to osteopathy, the rest is a generic introduction about the WHO’s policy on Traditional Medicine/Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
2. All references to the model of osteopathic physicians are missing. This is especially deplorable as the notion of one single worldwide profession with two “demographics” has developed around the joint creation of the original drafts – a vision that might be threatened by this document.
3. In the original draft a sample curriculum with the number of hours for each subject was included in the documents annex. This curriculum is now

Dear Member,