Longevity clinics in Asia

How is longevity medicine regulated across Asia?

Asia has no health authority above the national level. The only intergovernmental instruments that reach medical practice or medical products in any Asian market the Atlas maps are ASEAN's, they cover six of the fifteen markets, and each of them hands the decision back to the individual country in its own text. A longevity clinic in Asia is licensed by the country it stands in, and there is no Asian clinic category to hold it to.

There is no Asian license to practise medicine. The one intergovernmental arrangement on medical practitioners states that it shall not reduce, eliminate or modify the rights, power and authority of each member state and its professional medical regulatory authority to regulate and control medical practitioners and the practice of medicine. A doctor recognized under it is registered by the host country's own authority and is subject to that country's domestic regulations, its professional and ethical codes of conduct and its prevailing laws.

ASEAN member states; national professional medical regulatory authorities, ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement on Medical Practitioners, articles III and V, signed February 26, 2009. Primary source .

The region's one binding instrument on medical products takes effect country by country. It requires acceptance by each member state in accordance with that state's internal domestic requirements, and it states that the agreement is in force only among the member states that have accepted it. Its subject is medical devices. It does not reach clinics.

ASEAN member states; ASEAN Medical Device Committee, ASEAN Agreement on Medical Device Directive, article 22, in force from January 1, 2015. Primary source .

High on both instruments, and each fact is the text of the instrument rather than a characterization of it. The medical device agreement is read from the ASEAN Secretariat's own published copy. The practitioners arrangement is read from the Centre for International Law reproduction at the National University of Singapore, which labels itself an unofficial text, because the Secretariat's own copy could not be retrieved in this pass.

ASEAN reaches six of the fifteen Asian countries in the Atlas taxonomy, and all six carry organizations: Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Of the other nine, five carry organizations, India, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea, Japan and Azerbaijan, and four sit in the taxonomy with none, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, China and Taiwan. None of the nine falls under a supranational health instrument this pass could find, and each is governed by its own national regime. Where one of them has been researched it is carried on that country's page. Whether any bilateral or other sub-regional arrangement covers those nine was not checked.

For how individual markets in Asia compare, see Longevity Clinic Regulation, Market by Market .