Ayurvedic doctors now allowed to do surgeries

New Delhi: Now the Post Graduate (PG) students of Ayurveda would perform variety of general surgery, including orthopaedic, ophthalmology, ENT and dental as the central government has okayed it.

The Centre in its gazette notification allowed Ayurvedic PG pass-outs to receive formal training for such procedures.

The training modules for surgical procedures will be added to the curriculum of Ayurvedic studies.

The development has come after the Central Council of Indian Medicine amended Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016, to include the aforementioned regulation to allow the PG students of Ayurveda for practising the general surgery.

"The Central Council of Indian Medicine, with the previous sanction of the Central Government, hereby makes the following regulations further to amend the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016," the gazette notification read.

The act has been renamed Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Amendment Regulations, 2020.

"During the period of study, the PG scholar of Shalya and Shalakya shall be practically trained to acquaint (themselves) with as well as independently perform the following activities so that after completion of his PG degree, they are able to perform the following procedures (list of the procedures) independently," the gazette notification stated.

The notification informed that the students will be trained in two streams of surgery and would be awarded titles of MS (Ayurved) Shalya Tantra – (General Surgery and MS (Ayurved) Shalakya Tantra (Disease of Eye, Ear, Nose, Throat, Head and Oro-Dentistry).

The latest move by the Centre is an addition to the host of decisions taken amid pandemic which shows an impending paradigm shift in healthcare from modern medicine to the traditional form.

Annulling Medical Council of India to form National Medical Commission and introducing Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Bill, 2020, which allows assorted paramedics to practice medicine independently – are a few of the decisions which has put the modern medicine practitioners in deep concern regarding their future of healthcare.

IMA to resist move

The Indian Medical Association has been openly opposing such policy moves by the Centre, especially the plan to mix modern medicine with the traditional systems of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), in coming years, as envisaged by the Centre.

Dr Rajan Sharma, President, IMA had earlier stated that an integrative system of medicine would create a "Khichdi medical system" and would produce hybrid doctors.

The apex body of private practitioners of modern medicine had also condemned the centre's ambitious one nation one system policy in medical education and called it a cocktail of disaster.

The IMA stated that it saw this move as a retrograde step of mixing the systems which, it said, will be resisted at all costs.

"All over India, students and practitioners of modern medicine are agitated over this violation of mutual identity and respect," the IMA said.

It also urged the CCIM to develop its own surgical disciplines from its own ancient texts and not claim the surgical disciplines of modern medicine as its own.

"We unequivocally condemn the uncivil ways of the Central Council of Indian Medicine to arrogate itself to vivisect modern medicine and empower its practitioners with undeserving areas of practice. The said council has come out with a gazette notification of a list of surgical procedures which can be performed by its practitioners. They have no right to the technical terms, techniques and procedures of modern medicine. IMA draws the 'Lakshman Rekha' which they can cross at their peril," the IMA said.

Besides, the IMA also informed that it has asked its members and the medical fraternity not to teach disciplines of modern medicine to the students of other systems. "IMA will resist all efforts to mix systems. Let every system grow on its own strength and purity," it added.

(With IANS inputs)