Healthy tradition: Alternate forms of medicine may turn into boon for rural areas

Healthcare for all has always been a much-debated topic in a developing country like India. While there are many challenges associated with providing proper medical attention to patients in rural areas, the Primary Healthcare Centres in villages and kasbas have since time immemorial been ill-equipped in terms of medicines, implements, doctors and nurses.

This has forced the rural populace to turn to untrained “medical practitioners” who have set up their “practice” after managing to learn bare treatment methods while working as compounders of MBBS/MD doctors in nearby towns or cities. The huge downside is that such “practitioners” treat on the basis of guesswork, which at times backfires and the patient’s ailment or disease worsens and they have to be rushed to government hospitals, sometimes resulting in fatalities.

POUNDING OUT DISEASES

Traditional means of medicine, like Ayurveda, Unani and Homeopathy, come to the rescue of the underprivileged and the poor in rural areas as they are not as costly as allopathy, both in terms of doctors’ fees and cost of medicines. But the majority of the masses still leans towards allopathy as it is quick to heal them of their ailments. The limited income factor also does not attract good talent to adopt traditional medicine as their profession.

Moreover, traditional medicine doses have to be tailored for each patient based on their habits, routine, mental state, preferences, what they eat, etc. For example, a homeopathy practitioner must spend a considerable time noting down the aforementioned before giving a mix of the liquids in the form of sweet pills, otherwise the medicine will have no effect. Also, during the intake of traditional medicines, certain foods are to be avoided.

Most of the time, traditional medicine practitioners are in a hurry to cater to a larger number of patients, so they give them generalised doses, which do not work in the manner intended. This also forces patients to shy away from traditional medicine.

However, a ray of light has come in the form of 25 countries coming together to promote traditional medicine. Recently, a B2B Conference and Expo along with National Arogya Summit was held at Guwahati under India’s Presidency of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The event promoted traditional medicine to contribute in economic development, environment protection and achieving the goal of health security among the SCO nations.

The Ministry of Ayush has taken various initiatives on traditional medicine during India’s SCO Presidency by organising virtual conference of experts and practitioners and conducting the First Expert Working Group on Traditional Medicine wherein draft regulations have been approved. The regulation would be subjected to each country’s administrative procedures and finally be adopted at the Head of the States Summit.