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Dated 12 December 2007
Dear Mr.
Prime Minister,
The current global health sector trends suggest that medical pluralism, to which
Indian traditional medical systems can contribute critical components, will shape the
future of healthcare. This shift from singularity to plurality is taking place because it
is becoming increasingly evident that no single source of health science has the
capacity to contribute solutions to all of societys health needs. India has a
comparative advantage and can be a world leader in the era of medical pluralism
because it has strong foundations in evidence-based biomedical sciences as well as an
immensely rich and complex indigenous medical heritage of its own. The
Government has already undertaken and encouraged several initiatives in the area of
traditional medicine within the country including establishment of the Department of
AYUSH in the Ministry of Health and creating support programs in S&T agencies
like CSIR, ICMR, DBT & DST. To accelerate this momentum, the National
Knowledge Commission (NKC) consulted extensively with diverse stakeholders
within the related fields and also constituted a Working Group of researchers, private
sector representatives and policy-makers. Our recommendations on strategies to
promote the knowledge systems of traditional medicine are as follows:
1. Transform traditional medicine education: The quality of and access to education
in traditional medicine in the country needs urgent improvement. There are currently
450 poorly endowed colleges (undergraduate and post-graduate) admitting around
25,000 students in the country. These colleges are not training students to play
leadership roles in the emerging era of medical pluralism. The major reason for this
lacuna is that education in traditional medicine fails to provide the transformational
catalysis necessary to link traditional medical system sources to evidence-based
approaches. This has led to isolation of such education and lack of its pluralistic
integration into mainstream evidence-based medicine education, which is essential if
Indias traditional medical heritage is to find its rightful place in global medical
pluralism.
It is recommended that efforts be made to introduce evidence-based approaches into
the current educational framework, possibly through institutions of the standard of
IISc, IITs and AIIMS with commensurate financial outlays.
2. Strengthen research on traditional health systems: Investments in research and
development of traditional medicine have been sub-critical and fragmented resulting
in scarcity of evidence about the efficacy of THS. In addition, these efforts have also
been frequently characterized by a lack of rigorous evidence-based approaches. There
has also been little appreciation of the role that social science research must play in
comprehending the variety of societal perceptions and responses so critical to ideas of
medical pluralism. There is a need to urgently establish a network of world-class
research programmes in different parts of the country to address these lacunae, with
appropriate institutional and incentive structures. It is essential for India to make
original, rigorously evidence-based contributions to the world of medicine in fields
such as pharmaco-genomics, immunology, drug discovery and cardiology via
imaginative examination of traditional ideas such as prakrti, rasayana or rasa.
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