What ails traditional medicine?
gross non-utilisation of budgetary allocation has severely hampered the growth of traditional systems of medicine in India, says the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (cag).
In a recent report on the department of ayurveda, yoga, naturopathy, unani, siddha and homeopathy (ayush), cag said the lack of money was clearly not the reason for the sad state of traditional medicine systems.
The Union ministry of health and family welfare allocated just two per cent of the health budget to ayush against the promised 10 per cent. But even this was not used. As of December 2004, 72 per cent of the money allocated to 12 states for the period between 2000-2005 remained unutilised. This has affected projects such as setting up of specialised therapy centres, supply of essential drugs and health resort clinics for tourists.
cag inspected 142 colleges and their attached hospitals run by ayush and found that none possessed adequate facilities or faculty. Even the five special centres constituted to impart high quality education lacked adequate infrastructure. The pharmacopoeia committees have also failed to set standards for compound drugs.
As many as 59 of the 66 research projects begun seven years ago by ayush remain incomplete. The processes of drug standardisation, drugs proving and clinical verification are not moving in tandem, cag noted. Only 707 out of 7,849 manufacturing units have the mandatory