AYUSH: Promoting what?
AYUSH- is a department under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. This acronym stands for Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. In short it this department deals with all the popular medical systems that are less popular than the Allopathic or western or modern medical system.
Now why there is a separate department for these set of medical systems? These systems do not share anything in common other than that they are Medical systems which have been scientifically documented and traditionally practiced over a long period of time and that they are less popular than the Allopathic medical system. Otherwise, they are essentially different from each other. The DNA of these systems itself is different. How you can club Ayurveda with homeopathy where the former relies of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs, the later works on esoteric principles of "Memory of Solvents" (at least esoteric to other systems of medicine).So the question is: Why one department to cater all these disparate systems.
One probable reason might be that these are less popular systems that the government wants to systematically destroy without inviting public outcry.
Let me base my arguments on an example. Let us take the degree for homeopathy. This is called BHMS(Bachelor of Homeopathy, Medicine and Surgery). Readers will forgive my ignorance if the Bachelor is in fact Baccalaureus. But speaking in plain english, this course teaches the students about Homeopathy, Surgery and Medicine. Now this BHMS graduate can not issue a death certificate. Reason: he is not MBBS.
And what do the students study in this course? They ready stuff like, anatomy, physiology, pathology, clinicology etc. etc. and all these '-logy' are same as in the MBBS courses. Only difference between MBBS graduate and BHMS graduate is that BHMS guy does not read about antibiotics and the MBBS about homeopathy. Net-net, a BHMS graduate is expected to know as much as an MBBS guy about human body. And if an MBBS is capable of declaring a person dead, so is a BHMS. It is beyond my comprehension why a doctor is denied right to declare death of a person just because he has not studied about antibiotics..... how is knowledge of antibiotics related with ability of doctor declaring death?
So a BHMS can not issue death cerificate, he can not issue fitness certificate. His knowledge of human body is a cipher because he is not taught about antibiotics, at least officially.
Now coming to the effect of this all. Lets see where these BHMS are mostly employed in India. Select few succeed as independent practitioners. Few others find some sinister jobs of contract in govt hospitals in the AYUSH wing(lucky ones, even if they are paid half as much). Others move to smaller towns and hometowns to catch the clientele in the family circles. And majority join hospitals as assistants to the allopathic doctors. The term coined for these guys is 'allied'. so these guys assist the surgeon on surgery, unofficially because he is not capable of doing surgery in eyes of government.
So to me it appears that these systems are being systematically sidelined by GoI.
If GoI is serious about promoting these medicine systems, it should permit the doctors coming out of AYUSH to be treated at par with the MBBS doctors. They should be allowed to issue death and fitness certificate because they are capable of doing so. If GoI does not permit them certain things, it better provide cogent reasons to do so rather than declaring monosyllabic : MBBS Yes, BHMS No.
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