New Educational Policy to Give A Major Boost to Traditional Systems of Medicine Including Ayurveda

With clear references on the education of traditional medical practices in National Education Policy (NEP), experts in the field are expecting a major boost in the study and practice of Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha etc. during the coming years, reports suggest. A greater emphasis is given on preventive healthcare and community medicine in all forms of healthcare education.

“Healthcare education needs to be re-envisioned so that the duration, structure, and design of the educational programmes need to match the role requirements that graduates will play. Students will be assessed at regular intervals on well-defined parameters primarily required for working in primary care and in secondary hospitals.” says the policy.

Statue of Acharya Charaka who is one of the principal contributors to Ayurveda

Meantime, under its new NEP released Wednesday, there are plans to integrate modern medicine with the traditional systems of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) which is now being criticized by experts in the field of allopathy medicine, terming it a move that will “produce official quacks”.

“Given that people exercise pluralistic choices in healthcare, our healthcare education system must be integrative meaning thereby that all students of allopathic medical education must have a basic understanding of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH), and vice versa,” the policy says.

Acharya Sushruta is popularly known as the ‘Father of Surgery’.

Traditional medical practices are being neglected in India since centuries, especially after the induction of the Western system of medicine. With medical schools terming Ayurveda and other systems of medicines as ‘unscientific’, there is a trend among allopathy doctors to discourage people from approaching other systems of medicine.

The new educational policy that envisions to change the very perspective of medical students towards Ayurveda and allied sciences is expected to create a generation of medical practitioners who would maintain respect towards other systems too. Meantime, the approach stresses upon preventive medicine that would help to bring up healthier generations, experts say.