legally permitted to prescribe modern medicine

The Telegraph Calcutta | Tuesday , June 18 , 2013 | Modern plan for medicine G.S. MUDUR New Delhi, June 17: Doctors of ayurveda and three other systems of medicine may be legally permitted to prescribe modern medicine under a controversial proposal from the Union health ministry that has angered sections of modern medics. The health ministry has asked state governments to take steps to allow state medical councils to enrol doctors with degrees in the traditional systems of medicine — ayurveda, unani, siddha, and homeopathy (AYUSH) — to enable them to practice modern medicine. The move is intended to use India’s estimated 700,000 doctors armed with degrees in one of the four AYUSH fields to combat the country’s shortage of allopathic doctors, the health ministry said in a note sent to state health secretaries. The ministry has also asked its AYUSH department to pencil a draft curriculum that would define competencies for AYUSH professionals to practice “preventive, curative, and rehabilitative allopathic medicine”. “We want to use these qualified people to address the shortage,” a health ministry official said. The health ministry estimates that India has 650,000 registered allopathic practitioners, but the country’s doctor-to-population ratio is about 0.5 per 1000, in contrast to China’s ratio of 1.6 per 1000 people, or America’s ratio of 2.6. Some states such as Chhattisgarh have allowed AYUSH doctors to prescribe modern medicines, but sections of the medical community have long opposed the idea of allowing AYUSH degree-holders to practise allopathic medicine. “In certain situations when no allopathic doctor is available, AYUSH doctors may be able to save lives, but I’m still uncomfortable with this proposal,” a senior community medicine specialist in a public-funded medical college told The Telegraph. “Inexperience with modern drugs may at times lead to unintentional harm,” the doctor said. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1998 that doctors qualified in traditional systems of medicine could practice modern (allopathic) medicine provided they have been enrolled in the register of the state medical council for practitioners of modern medicine. The health ministry has said state governments can notify the qualifications that are eligible for registration in the state medical register. Doctors from AYUSH streams also undergo about five years of training, comparable to the duration of the course leading to the MBBS degree. “This proposal is absurd,” said Krishan Kumar Aggarwal, a senior cardiologist in New Delhi, and a member of the Delhi Medical Council. “This is going to annoy the medical fraternity — it’s likely to be challenged if they try to go through with it,” Aggarwal told this newspaper. While the government could well use AYUSH doctors to fill up vacancies in public health care facilities, Aggarwal said, it would be inappropriate to allow them to practise modern medicine. “What message would they be sending?” he said. “Are the AYUSH streams of medicine not good enough to manage illnesses for which they’ll be allowed to practise allopathic medicine?” But sections of public health professionals say there is evidence that doctors qualified in the AYUSH streams can make use of modern diagnostic techniques as well as prescribe allopathic medicines. “In Chhattisgarh, we’ve observed AYUSH doctors practising modern medicine,” said Krishna Dipankar Rao, a health economist with the Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi. “They don’t fare so badly — we’d rate their performance above that of paramedics and only slightly below that of allopathic practitioners.”