Curing our medical vision

AT A time when a growing number
of Western countries are
focusing in on alternate
medicine, India is neglecting its
traditional cures. In the urban
centres, where the manufacturers
of allopathic drugs launch
aggressive, no-holds-barred
marketing campaigns, the off-take too
is phenomenal, with many
popping pills as a matter of
routine, whether their bodies
need them or not. Self-cure of
symptoms are propagated in
advertisements, which never
mention that drugs have to be
recommended by physicians.

The setback to the popularity of
home remedies and
traditional medicine in the
metropolitan cities and large
urban conglomerates is the
cumulative effect of the
priorities
set by the peer group of medical
scientists after 1947. It was
distinctly their Western
education, training and practice
that permeated the carving out of a
national health care policy.
Today, there are many who'd hold
the politicians responsible
for this. Yet, it will be totally
wrong for the Indian scientists
to blame them for neglecting Indian
med ical systems - from
Mahatma Gandhi to Raj Narain to P
V Narasimha'Rao, there
have been many with a keen
interest in the subject.
Unfortunately, they have all run
up against a brick wall.

A revival could have come early
enough, but the opportunity was missed. On a visit to
post-war Vietnam, P M
Bhargava, a former director of
the Centre for Cellular and
Molecular Biology, saw the
largescale use of herbs and the
meticulous documentation of case
studies of patients under treatment. On his
return, he
recommended to former Prime
Minister, the
late Indira Gandhi, that one of
the best forms
of development assistance India
could provide
to the country then trying to
reshape itself,
would be to send a tearnof
bio-statisticians, to
supplement their researches in
ethno-medicine, and identify effective
curative herbs from
the enormous records they
possessed. But the
file gathered dust. There was no
follow up
action. A first rate opportunity
for acquiring knowledge about
systematising ethno-medicine was lost.

This lacuna was brought to the
fore at the May meeting in
Simla of specialists in Indian
Systems of Medicine (ism), with
representatives of the World
Bank, which is willing to provide
an impetus to traditional
medicine. Preliminary
consultations
showed up the anxiety of the
donor agency over the lack of
case and control studies on
patients, standardisation and
quality control of drugs, besides
an acceptable format for
project proposals.

Another opportunity for a
significant initiative in making
sure cures in traditional systems
of medicine available to a
larger number of people has come
with Prime Minister P V
Narasimha Rao's decision to
promote Indian systems of
medicine and homeopathy. The
Directorate General of Health
Services has secured the services
of exponents of the different
disciplines as in-house advisers.
But the indications are that
they are fast transmutating into
bureaucrats tied down with
procurement procedures, instead of
being in touch with the
ground realities for policy
formulation.

Over the years, faith in the
traditional systems of medication have been eroded, possibly
due to the low profile maintailied by its practitioners, who
scarcely ever project the spectacular cures they have effected
through their systems. Had it
been known, for instance, how many
of the superstars, both of
the filmy and political variety,
actually depend on ayurvedic or
unani systems for their personal
daily health conditioning, it
would ensure a major growth of
interest among the masses.
But today, among the students of
traditional systems, there is
a perceptible lack of confidence
in their own discipline.

Several drug manufacturers are
cashing in on the increas-
ing environmental consciousness
about the benign quality of
natural products, anil actually
including elements well outside
their regimen. And @'the biggest
single misuse of the now
growing curiosity o6lherbals is
being made by the cosmetics
industry.

Yet, a large number of common
people have faith in the
hakim and the vaid, ,who need only
to be true to their disciplines. The "back-to-herbs"
movement is catching on in the
urbari,areas, especially with
people becoming
more and more aware that
allopathic drugs
so*Jimes have after-effects which
can be
trauntatising; for instance, the
use of steroids
in several types of treatments.

It is a welcome sign that today
dispen-saries run by civic bodies,
like the
New Delhi Municipal Committee, and
by
the Central Government Health
Services,
are offering complementary
treatments
and medicines, with unani and
ayurvedic
doctors in attendance.

This practice in public health
care could set the long-term
agenda for herbal medicine and
other complementary therapies. With a large number of young
doctors just coming out of
colleges opting for Indian systems
of medicine, the time is now
ripe to make sure that the ailing
are given a choice, and not
persistently subjected to one mode
of treatment.

The Chinese, Tibetans and Arabs
have for centuries treasured the wisdom of the ages. And
their traditional medicinal
systems have given the world
several spectacular cures. We
need to learn from them. But this
means that organisations
like the Indian Council of Medical
Research and, in fact, the
entire medical profession would
have to be made more
conscientious, accountable and
reasonable.