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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Spat over ayurveda primer for doctors -GS Mudur

Spat over ayurveda primer for doctors -GS Mudur

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published Published on Aug 16, 2016   modified Modified on Aug 16, 2016
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The Centre's regulatory body for traditional medicine has decided to offer a two-year postgraduate diploma course in ayurveda to doctors of modern medicine, drawing criticism from some medical professionals.

The course will help doctors with degrees such as MBBS and MD to learn the basic principles of ayurveda, a senior official with the Central Council for Indian Medicine said.

"We believe there is interest in ayurveda, mainly from doctors outside India but also from some within India," council president Ved Prakash Tyagi said. "The syllabus for the course is yet to be designed."

Council members said they realised that many Indian practitioners of modern medicine were opposed to moves that might encourage "cross-practice" --- ayurvedic doctors prescribing modern medicines or modern medical practitioners prescribing ayurvedic drugs.

"This course could be regarded by some as a move to integrate the two streams of medicine, but it is difficult to predict its acceptance," Amitabh Kumar, a council member and professor at the Suryamukhi Dinesh Ayurved College and Hospital, Ranchi, told The Telegraph.

Some modern doctors in India are already prescribing proprietary ayurvedic medicines for specific health disorders, Kumar said.

"We believe there are certain illnesses in which ayurveda may have solutions that work better than what is available in modern medicine - integration is only about taking the best from both."

"We are against cross-practice," said Ashwini Goyal, secretary of the Delhi Medical Association, expressing a view long held by private associations of modern doctors in India.

"Patients are, of course, free to choose whatever stream they want to be treated through --- modern medicine, ayurveda or homeopathy ---- but doctors should prescribe only medications from their field of training."

Some doctors said that a few decades ago, colleges in some states used to offer integrated courses that exposed medical students to both ayurveda and modern medicine. One such course led to the Graduate of the Faculty of Ayurvedic Medicine degree.

"In recent decades, modern medicine and ayurveda have functioned in isolation," said Sanjay Nagaral, a senior gastrointestinal surgeon in Mumbai. "But there is no harm in borrowing things from ayurveda that have been proven scientifically and are backed by strong evidence."

Many members of medical associations do not agree. Krishna Kumar Aggarwal, secretary of the Indian Medical Association, said Indian laws require doctors to stick to their own stream when prescribing drugs.

"There is an issue of safety of patients," he said. "Schedule H, H1 and X drugs can only be prescribed by modern doctors while schedule E(1) drugs, which are potentially hazardous ayurvedic preparations and thus need to be used with caution, can only be prescribed by qualified ayurvedic practitioners."

Ayurvedic practitioners argue that India's ayurveda colleges offer five-and-a-half-year Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) degrees, where students learn anatomy and physiology just as students of modern medicine do. About 10,000 BAMS graduates emerge from India's 290 ayurveda colleges each year.

"Many such BAMS doctors are employed by hospitals and practise modern medicine," a senior consultant doctor said. "There may also be a case to establish courses to train qualified BAMS practitioners in pharmacology, which will help them prescribe modern medicines."

India's health ministry has long recognised qualifications in all streams of medicine as equivalent and stressed the need for integrated medicine.

In June, Union minister J.P. Nadda inaugurated a Centre for Integrative Medicine and Research at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, which will explore the use of ayurveda and yoga in treating various illnesses.

But associations of modern practitioners say that cross-practice amounts to quackery. "Anyone practising a stream of medicine without relevant qualifications is practising quackery," said Rakesh Gupta, president of the Delhi Medical Association.

The Telegraph, 16 August, 2016, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160816/jsp/nation/story_102671.jsp#.V7J9IRL39sA


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