“The Health Ministry of India along with IMA must look into the issue of how Ayurvedic and Homeopathic doctors in India perform full-fledged surgeries upon patients who’re guinea-pigs in the hands of these incompetent doctors who’ve not learnt the basics of intricate surgery. These ‘doctors’ can at the most do incisions, but surgery of any sort must be out of their domain.”
-Lancet, Editorial, 1997
“Ayurveda is a different and independent system of medicine/s. It must be based on the necessary aspects of Ayurveda only. Mixing it with Allopathy by incorporating surgery into its syllabus may sound a Medical Blasphemy to the practitioners of Allopathy. “
-Dr Devon Neil and Dr Clarke Stackpole, Lancet, September 2004
Despite the Lancet’s repeated warnings and apprehensions, Ayurvedic physicians can now execute surgeries, with the Central government enabling postgraduate (PG) students to practise basic surgery, alongside orthopaedics, ophthalmology, ENT and dentistry.
The Centre amended the Indian Medicine Central Council Regulations, 2016, to introduce formal coaching in the above-described procedures as portion of the curriculum for post-graduate students of shalya (basic surgery) and shalakya (illnesses of ear, nose, throat, ENT, eye, head, oro-dentistry) specialisations.
This is certainly alarming! It’s a blow to the contemporary scientific strategy to allopathy, which is primarily based on the Experimental Diagnostic Method (EDM).
Ayurveda is certainly a genuine technique of healthcare science rooted in India and the subcontinent. In other words, it really is not spurious. But the point is: The strategy of ayurveda is fully unique than that of allopathy. Agreed, the Ayurveda of ancient India descanted upon surgeries, even cataract surgery and the Sushruta Samhita, written in 600 BCE, speaks about heart surgery and cracks in the cranium (pridanam kapalam in Sanskrit) and how to repair it, but most of the surgical approaches and measures described in the Sushruta Samhita are hypothetical, just like the polymath and the greatest Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of future aircraft, vehicles and parachutes. In brief, there is no sensible surgery.
In his seminal book in Sanskrit, Anvya avam Mithak (Translated as Integration and Myths by the Spalding Professor Dr Bimal Krishna Matilal of Oxford), Professor V S Sukthankar, the greatest exegete on the Mahabharat at BORI, Poona, wrote: ‘ The so-known as surgeries in ancient Ayurveda may possibly have been prototypes of contemporary surgeries, practised, fashioned and bettered by the contemporary Allopathy. That the surgeries truly did take spot in ancient India could be a good myth….’
But the present dispensation and neo-nationalists, weaned on ancient India’s perceived ‘greatness’, will vouch for plastic and brain surgery, as effectively as nose and jaw-fixing, by our venerable Ayurvedacharyas of ancient Vedic India!
Allowing Ayurvedic physicians to execute intricate surgeries will develop massive challenges. It’s akin to playing with fire. Remember, we’re dealing with human lives. It’s worthwhile to mention that Ayurveda is primarily based on plants and extracts and how that can enable ameliorate the collective effectively-becoming of mankind. It also emphasises a person’s anatomical prakriti (constitutional proclivity). To encapsulate, it really is naturopathy with a critical twist. All these ancient Ayurvedic treatises are in Sanskrit but if you appear at the syllabus of BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicines and Surgery), you hardly come across even a superficial translation of any of the 81 out there Ayurvedic treatises of ancient India. Students and teachers of BAMS do not use Sanskrit terms. Instead, they resort to Greek and Latin terms of contemporary healthcare science and hurriedly study a semblance of surgery to turn into a physician to be on a par with an allopath! This is unjust and unfair.
Have you ever come across a BAMS who prescribes common Ayurvedic medicines to remedy an ailment? He or she’ll have recourse to generic allopathic medicines. With such incompetent grounding in allopathy as effectively as their personal ayurveda, how can they execute surgeries? They’re not competent to do that. Yet, it really is frightening to study that 95 % ICUs are manned by Ayush docs (The Times of India, November 25, claimed by Vaid Jayant Deopujari).
No offence meant, but when these vaidyas (practitioners of ayurveda are vaidyas and practitioners of allopathy are physicians, medics or medicos) masquerade as docs and execute surgeries, even an atheist begins praying to god for mere survival! Jokes aside, only in India, the practitioners of all healthcare systems are docs. Like generic medicines, the term physician has also turn into generic! But nowhere else, does 1 get to see this healthcare generalisation the way it really is in India. In Iran and even in Pakistan, a practitioner of Unani medicine is not known as a physician. He’s known as a hakim, tabeeb (from the Arabic Ilm-e-Tabeeb) or the Persian chaaragar.
Not only that, they’ve to show that they are hakims or homeopaths on their insignia, to prevent confusion. Mind you, they are not permitted to execute any sort of surgery, whereas, a Unani hakim is a physician in India performing important surgeries and there is a government-authorized course for homeopaths, identified as BHMS (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicines and Surgery!). These ‘docs ‘ can not execute even an incision in sophisticated nations. But right here in India, they do brain surgery as effectively! We’re worse than a third-planet nation!
It’s time to take into account the ongoing mayhem in the healthcare profession. All allopaths ought to come collectively to cease this nonsense of Ayurvedic physicians performing operations. But then, in a nation exactly where midwives are observed as gynaecologists, compounders as physicians and ward boys as surgical assistants in the OT, who’ll cease Ayurvedic docs from operating individuals?
It’s a pity that the healthcare segment in India has often been neglected by all governments. Such a very important segment is nevertheless uncared-for. We’ve sufficient time to create and demolish temples and mosques, but no time to create a planet-class integrated healthcare technique with competent physicians. It’s all perfunctory and cease-gap healthcare in this nation.
Lastly, Maharashtra has a proliferation of BAMS, BHMS and BUMS (Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery) colleges churning out an army of these quasi-physicians who’re jeopardising public wellness and bending the guidelines of healthcare ethics.
The writer is an sophisticated analysis scholar of Semitic languages, civilisations and cultures.