The government recently issued a notification authorising post-graduate practitioners in specified streams of Ayurveda to be given training to perform certain surgical procedures.
These surgeries include procedures such as excisions of benign tumours, nasal and cataract surgeries, a move which has drawn flak from the modern medicine fraternity.
The November 20 gazette notification by the Central Council of Indian Medicine (CCIM), a statutory body under the AYUSH Ministry to regulate the Indian systems of medicine, listed 39 general surgery procedures and around 19 procedures involving the eye, ear, nose and throat by amending the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016.
The government's decision has been met with severe criticism from the Indian Medical Association, the largest body of modern medicine doctors, and doctors across the country.
IMA has condemned the move, describing it as ˇ°poaching the disciplines of modern medicine through back door meansˇ± and a ˇ°retrograde step of mixing the systemsˇ±.
Demanding that the order be withdrawn, the IMA urged the CCIM to develop their own surgical disciplines from their own ancient texts and not claim the surgical disciplines of modern medicine as their own.
To lay rest to apprehensions arising out of its notification, the Ministry of AYUSH on Sunday issued clarifications answering the questions that have been raised in the matter.
The Ministry in its clarification said that the said notification relates to the 'Shalya and Shalakya streams of Post Graduate Education in Ayurveda.'
"The notification specifies (in clearer terms than the earlier notification on the subject) a total of 58 surgical procedures that PG scholars of these streams (cumulatively) need to be practically trained so as to enable them to independently perform the said activities after completion of their PG Degree. The notification is too specific to these specified surgical procedures and does not allow Shalya and Shalakya Post Graduates to take up any other types of surgery," it stated.
"Since the beginning, Shalya and Shalakya are independent Departments in Ayurveda colleges, performing such surgical procedures. While the notification of 2016 stipulated that the students shall undergo training of investigative procedures, techniques, and surgical performance of procedures and management in the respective specialty, the details of these techniques, procedures, and surgical performance were laid down in the syllabus of the respective PG courses issued by CCIM, and not the regulation per se. The present clarification was issued in the overall public interest by CCIM by bringing the said details into the regulation. Hence this does not signify any policy shift," the Ministry said.