Methods and materials
In the fall of 2004 the health ministries in 29 European countries were contacted, by telephone or e-mail, to collect documentation on the regulation of health services, health personnel, CAM practitioners, CAM products and supervisory practises. The information was collected by means of a written questionnaire (e-mail) or by a similarly structured interview guide (telephone). The choice of a telephone interview was made when an e-mail address was either unavailable or when no response was received to the e-mail. All countries except France, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Portugal and Slovakia replied to our email or phone call, some after several reminders. Where primary data was limited, secondary literature, as well as documents published on the Internet has been used. In April 2005 the first author (GE) met with the responsible persons for this area in the health departments of The Netherlands, Austria, Hungary and Slovenia . The purpose of these site visits was to obtain detailed information of how the legal and regulatory framework was put into practise in four countries representing different approaches to CAM regulation.
A draft of the final report, based on the information obtained from each country, was sent by e-mail in May / June 2005 asking every country to double-check the information presented about own country. Nineteen countries submitted comments regarding the description, updated information was received from six countries, but Cyprus, France, Latvia and Portugal gave little or no feedback.
