A healthy decision - As published in Times of India

The move by select insurance groups to cover ayurvedic treatments is wise - and timely. Ayurveda is an ancient Indian medical practice, laced with philosophy around holistic health. It uses plant- and mineral-based medicines, yoga and other natural methods to combat illnesses. In contemporary times, with growing numbers of people rejecting chemical concoctions, ayurveda with its natural elements appeals powerfully to many.
As insurance companies themselves find, several subscribers prefer ayurveda over drugs for particular problems. It makes no sense to deny them insurance - simply because we don't believe in a non-western medical practice. Ironically, despite the large numbers of Indians reaching for ayurveda, India lags behind the world in giving it due recognition. Ayurveda is part of a wide international healthcare umbrella titled 'Complementary and Alternative Medicine' that includes traditional Chinese remedies, naturopathy and aromatherapy. These appeal to many seeking options beyond drug- and surgery-based allopathic practices, whose drawbacks are many.

Including ayurveda within insurance schemes will help India in the international patenting race, while assisting the science to rid itself of quacks domestically, propelling it towards greater standardisation and uniformity. It's always intelligent to be open-minded towards diverse cures that help the human body. When psychotherapy began, it was often dismissed as total quackery. Today, it's standard practice over the world, helping people understand their own behaviour. Mediclaim policies in India tend to be overly restrictive, confining themselves to hospital care beyond 24 hours. To gain more customers they need to widen their ambit. They shouldn't be criticised when they try to be innovative.

Ayurvedic Treatment under Mediclaim - As published in Times of India

Insurance companies' latest move to include alternative forms of treatment, such as ayurveda, is unfortunate in the extreme. Traditional medicines will promote quackery in general, when the need is to provide people access to scientifically proven medical treatments. While practitioners of traditional medicine practices may invoke historical and cultural continuity, this form of treatment is not medically ideal.

To begin with, there is absolutely no scientific basis for the supposed efficacy of traditional medicines. Often, their basic principles run contrary to the established axioms of medical science. More worrying, however, is that these medicines fail to adhere to quality and standards tests for production. Not surprisingly, even the WHO doesn't currently recommend these practices. This is when the UN agency has been at the forefront of the worldwide efforts to explore the potential of traditional medicine systems. The EU ban on the sale of ayurvedic and other herbal medicines as a response to growing concern over their adverse effects is another case in point. On top of it all, traditional medical practitioners may not be certified or licensed.

Compare this to conventional medicines, which undergo rigorous and controlled lab tests to meet international standards. Most importantly, their regimens are prescribed by properly trained and registered doctors. Given that ayurvedic treatments are cheaper compared to allopathy, insurers can discriminate in claims and reimbursements, pushing more and more people towards unproven remedies. Besides, ayurveda's inclusion may lead to demands for similar recognition for other traditional therapies such as faith healing or treatment by witch doctors. It's time to draw the line somewhere.

Ayush Dept making comprehensive dossier to gain recognition of ISM products abroad

With a view to promote Ayurveda and other Indian Systems of Medicines (ISM) abroad, the Department of Ayush is planning a slew of measures including the preparation of a comprehensive dossier of all aspects to be sent to Indian embassies and high commissions to enable them to take up recognition of systems with appropriate government and regulatory authorities in their countries.

The preparation of the dossier had been pending for some time now and the task has been entrusted to the Advisor (Ayurveda) to complete it at the earliest. Apart from this, efforts will be made to gain legal recognition of Indian systems abroad and hence the participation and cooperation in international events will be stressed and held in a more focussed way, sources said. A high-level meeting has been held by the Secretary of Ayush Department recently to chalk out the measures.

The department will also prepare a panel of persons in the government and the private sector with at least 15 years of experience to represent the country outside at the events. “Anyone going abroad must have experience and knowledge in the field as he would be representing not only the country but also the system,” sources said. The junior officers will be encouraged to go out and delegations would have at least one officer from the panel.

An important way of spreading the knowledge of the systems was through education of foreign students in our institutions. However out of the 50 or so scholarships being offered by the Government, there had been utilization of only around 50 per cent or so in the last few years. This had also been reviewed, and steps have been taken to substantially improve the level of utilization of these scholarships.

The high-level meeting also reviewed all the existing schemes being implemented by the Department. “These revisions had been done to ensure better implementation of the schemes in a more clear and transparent manner, to achieve important objectives such as meaningful and monitorable deliverables in the schemes. It was important to note that these revisions had been carried out without making any structural change, or change in the scale of financial assistance under the various schemes. The revisions already carried out were in the process of being placed on the Departmental website. Henceforth, all new proposals will be scrutinized on the basis of the revised guidelines,” a senior official said.

IAF plans to challenge the legality of THMPD in UK court

With an intend to show displeasure over the ban of all ayurvedic products in the European Union through the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), the International Ayurveda Foundation (IAF) will soon initiate legal proceedings under Article 234 EC in the Courts of the United Kingdom challenging the legality of the THMPD.

The IAF has prepared a 200 pages lengthy report based on three arguments. The first argument will be challenging the legality of how does the directive become a law since it is in contravention with lots of existing laws in EU. The second will be focusing on how EU is violating the European human rights legislation, and the third argument will be focused on how EU is violating the existing protocol of WTO treaty through this directive.

According to Praful Patel, general secretary, IAF they will be fighting either both of the first three suites together or one by one separately. However, he informed that only the Indian government is legally authorised to challenge in the third case since its a WTO matter. As of now the IAF is in talks with the barristers from the EU on these matter so that they can take this issue ahead, whereas, they are subsequently planning to have meeting with its advisors on Ayurveda soon.

Patel informs, “It is necessary to challenge the EU directive because if it remains unchallenged there is a good chance that even other countries like US, Australia, Canada may follow suit and ban the traditional medicines in their respective countries as well. If this happens, it will be a disaster for the five billion worth Indian ayurvedic industry.”

He said that it is a shame that the Indian government did not take any steps in this matter till now and that it does not have the political will to highlight the Indian issue at an international level. IAF has been advocating this issue from last seven years and got a lukewarm response from every sector. However, Patel is hopeful that things will change fast and the industry will rope in their support by providing financial help as well.

He pointed out that there is only one permanent solution to this critical issue and that is to suspend the directive with immediate effect and have a separate directive or law that would recognise the traditional systems of medicines like Ayurveda as a separate entity. “Most importantly, we want the EU to take suggestions from the Indian government, IAF, etc while framing the law. It is important that individual systems should have recognised statutes since over 25 millions of people in Europe use traditional medicines,” added Patel.

Criticising the EU directive he said that the move to ban traditional medicines is an outcome of powerful European herbal lobby and will only lead to illegal use of medicines.

Stricter norms for colleges of traditional medicine

In order to ensure the quality of education to the students of Indian system of medicines and prevent mushrooming growth of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani (ASU) and Homoeopathic Colleges, the Centre has issued stricter parameters for granting permission for setting up or upgrading the existing colleges.

From this academic year (2011-02), the Department of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) has increased the requirement of minimum availability of teachers for under graduate colleges of ASU system from 28 to 32 teachers. In addition, there is now a mandatory requirement of one teacher in all the 14 departments of Ayurveda colleges, 8 departments of Unani colleges and 14 departments of Siddha colleges.

The new registration system has been introduced because many colleges were not complying with the guidelines specified for imparting AYUSH education with some of them attempted to indulge in unfair practices to project availability of infrastructure and teachers, Anil Kumar Secretary, department of AYUSH told reporters here on Tuesday.

India has 499 colleges teaching the Indian system of medicine — 311 colleges for Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha and 188 colleges teaching homeopathy — which will have to follow the new registration system from 2011 academic year.

In view of the improvement in the availability of the higher faculties it has now also been decided to insist upon having minimum 10 teachers in the rank of professors of readers for admission capacity up to 50 students in Ayurveda colleges.

“By 2011 end, the Centre would bring out a gazette notification stipulating the levels of hard and soft infrastructure the colleges should have to receive the recognition. Once the new norms are notified, all colleges will have to follow it,’’ he said.

At present, colleges teaching Indian system of medicine and homeopathy require annual approval to admit new students. With the new notification, the government plans to do away with the annual inspection system. The notification would make it mandatory for all colleges to have the stipulated facilities and faculty.

The new norms, Mr. Kumar said, would be applicable for the current academic year though they are most likely to be retained or strengthened in the final notification expected by the end of this year which would be applicable from the next academic year. The hospitals, too, should be a properly functional one and not a proxy set up created solely for the purpose of inspection.

Since all medical colleges in the alternate system too are required to have a functional hospital, the inspection team would have to look at the patient records like pathological and radiological diagnostics, diet and medicine chart to determine if the hospital is really functional or not.

Keywords: AYUSH, alternative medicine, traditional medicine, regulation

Kerala HC stays govt order allowing traditional healers to practise ayurveda without registration

The operation and implementation of the Kerala government’s order of 21-2-2011 giving exemption to traditional ayurvedic healers of Kerala from acquiring recognized qualification and registration for practicing ayurveda has been stayed by the Kerala High court on April 26.

The court made the judgement on a petition filed by a group of ayurvedic doctors belonging to the Kerala unit of the Ayurvedic Medical Association of India (AMAI). For the AMAI, Advocate P Gopinath Menon appeared in the court.

Besides giving permission to traditional ayurvedic healers, the order of February 21 by the Kerala government had exempted self educated homoeopathic practitioners of Malabar area to practice homoeopathy system without registration and academic qualification.

The high court had earlier stayed the permission given to the fake homoeopaths following a petition submitted by All Kerala Homoeopathic Coordination Council (AKHCC), a movement of qualified homoeopathic practitioners, students, teachers and Medical officers of that system.

The members of AMAI approached the court under Article 226 of the constitution of India requesting to quash the government order issued on February 21 this year. The petition was filed in public interest as well as to protect the professional interests of the Ayurvedic Medical Offices Association.

Office-bearers of AMAI said one of the objectives of the petition was to ensure that quackery bringing disrepute to qualified and authentic medical practitioners be prevented and put an end to ayurvedic system of health care from being misused by quacks in disguise. They said the association has definite knowledge that a large number of bogus practitioners continued to defraud the public by masquerading themselves as Ayurveda doctors and thereby cheating the public.

The order said that the unqualified and self-learnt people hailing from traditional healers’ family of Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasargod districts and were in the practising field for a continuous period of 20 years prior to 01-01-2011,could continue their practice in the concerned system by virtue of their hereditary.

The government had issued the order based on section 38 of the Travancore-Cochin Medical Practitioners Act 1953. The government had also exempted these traditional practitioners from the requirement of recognized qualification and registration.

Members of AMAI said the government order is against the provisions of the central council act. According to the association, the provisions of the TCMP Act has never been extended to the Malabar area of the state of Kerala , which was part of Madras province of the British India, prior to the formation of Kerala in 1956. It was the Madras Medical Registration Act 1914 that regulated the practice of medicine in the Madras province.

Ayurveda in Allopathy - in 20 Hrs ?

Maharashtra to include Ayurveda as part of MBBS syllabus
Our Bureau, Mumbai
Saturday, April 23, 2011, 08:00 Hrs [IST]

The Maharashtra University of Health Science (MUHS) will soon constitute an expert committee to discuss the new syllabus for the MBBS students for the coming academic year as it has been decided to include basic Ayurveda as part of MBBS syllabus in the medical colleges in the state.

A decision to include Ayurveda in MBBS syllabus was taken following recommendations from the Ayush department. There are 34 private and government medical colleges in the state. Their syllabus comes under the purview of the MUHS. According to the Ayush recommendations, every medical college should reserve at least 20 hours to teach ayurvedic science in MBBS classes.

Dr Arun Jamkar, vice chancellor, MUHS said “As per the suggestions made by Dept of Ayush we are meeting up to form a committee to implement these directives and to discuss the new syllabus for the medical students for the coming year.” He further informed that Maharashtra will be the first state for implementing such directives.

Dr Arun Jamkar, vice chancellor, MUHS said “We are meeting soon to form a committee to implement these directives and to discuss the new syllabus for the medical students for the coming year.”

Dr Vijay Magar, associate professor at the RA Podar Ayurvedic College and Hospital, Mumbai said “Ayurveda is an ancient medicine and the students are more interested in learning modern medicine. For this it is a nice move as modern medicine doctors should be familiar with ancient medicine and its treatment methodology. Every person should know about Ayurveda. Instead of devoting so much time for a course, we can have atleast one lecture every week. Like for conducting research in herbal products there are separate institutes.”

Dr Jamkar informed that as most of the universities across the world has been teaching the ancient medicine of their respective cultures. For instance, modern medicine doctors in China get lessons in Chinese medicine. “Finally we too are introducing the study of our ancient medicine. We are proud that ours will be the first state in the country to implement the Ayush directives”, he added.

MUHS ensures in proper and systematic instruction, teaching, training and research in modern medicine and Indian systems of medicine in the state of Maharashtra, and to have balanced growth in the medical sciences. They are taking initiative to implement this decision to attract more MBBS students to take up Ayurveda as the major subject to practice and to research on the same.