India plans to include holistic medicine in rural health mission.

June 17, 2006

Centre plans to include unani, homeopathy in health missionNEW DELHI: Hakims and Acharyas may rub shoulders with MBBS doctors to treat India's poor. The Centre is planning to integrate homeopathy, Unani and Siddha with mainstream medicine into the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) as part of its 11th five-year plan (2007-2012). According to a Planning Commission report, this integration will help solve the acute shortage of trained personnel being faced by India's health care system. At present, NRHM has provision for just two physicians from the Indian systems of medicine (ISM). The commission says that nearly 30% posts of doctors remain vacant while random checks by health ministry officials found nearly 67% doctors absent from work. At present, India has 1.48 lakh health sub-centres, 24,000 primary health centres and 3,500 functioning community health centres on the allopathic side with 23,000 ISM dispensaries and 3,100 ISM

hospitals. While 59,000 beds across rural India serve modern medicine systems, over 53,000 beds serve ISM. Syeda Hameed, member (health), Planning Commission, says: "Involvement of Unani and other ISMs in the rural health scheme is under consideration for the 11th plan. The problem of unavailability of doctors can be redressed if we mobilise doctors who are trained under ISM. Currently, there is no sustained dialogue between the two systems of medicine. The 11th plan would have more schemes for the development of Unani and other ISMs." India at present has close to half a million institutionally qualified ISM practitioners not included in the public sector supported health care system. Only 40,000 of them are employed by the government. "The trained ISM practitioners represent a valuable human resource at village and block levels. This could be leveraged and coopted into providing primary care. Kerala has fully combined modern medicine and

ISM with outstanding outcomes," the Planning Commission reports. Sources : Ayurvedaonline

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