The National Research Center in Complementary and Alternative Medicine

The National Research Center in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NAFKAM) is organized as a center at the Faculty of Medicine, the University of Tromsø, Norway, and it is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services.

The center promotes, implements and coordinates Norwegian research in complementary and alternative treatment. The center emphasises multidisciplinary research. In addition NAFKAM is working with education, consultancy services, international and national cooperation/network building and information.

WHO Collaborating Centre
NAFKAM was designated as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Traditional Medicine in 2008.

The Registry
The Registry of Exceptional Courses of Disease is a Scandinavian registry run by NAFKAM. The registry is collecting information from people who have experienced an exceptional course of disease after the use of alternative treatment compared to what was expected based upon medical examinations.

The Norway-China Cooperation
In 1999 Norway and China agreed to a Letter of Intent regarding cooperation within the field of health and medicine, and a plan of action was signed when the Norwegian Minister of Health at that time, Dagfinn Høybråten, visited China in October 2002. The Norwegian Directorate for Health and Social Affairs has assigned NAFKAM the duty of administrating the scientific and professional aspects of the section of the cooperation regarding Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

NIFAB - The National CAM Information Bank
In 2004 the Norwegian government gave the first budget appropriation for the creation of a national CAM information bank. The aim of this knowledge-based database is to provide Norwegian and English speaking users with unbiased research based information about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The National CAM Information Bank, NIFAB, was launched in May 2007. Read more at http://www.nifab.no/.