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Ayurveda offers a unique opportunity to evolve a science of healthy, harmonious and long life. Its holistic
approach to health and disease, involving body, mind and spirit, can provide a broader framework to understand research data emerging from reductionist biomedical sciences. This overview of a journey of a basic scientist into evidence-based A...
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Context 1
... 'whole to part' relation of Ayurveda philosophy is important for better understand- ing its comprehensive structure. The immense data include almost 300 variables describing the logical flow of concepts of Ayurveda which are presented using the SBGN approach for processes, entity relationships and activity flow (Figure 2). ...
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Ayurveda offers a unique opportunity to evolve a science of healthy, harmonious and long life. Its holistic approach to health and disease, involving body, mind and spirit, can provide a broader framework to understand research data emerging from reductionist biomedical sciences. This overview of a journey of a basic scientist into evidence-based A...
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... The limited evidence-based AYUSH research available in the public domain is generated by this sector through mostly, nongovernment funding. [4] An overview of the Indian public healthcare system thus clearly suggests that despite the fact that eight legally sanctioned health sciences operate within the health system, due to their skewed funding and poor integration, the public does not receive the advantage of synergy arising out of the richness of India's Medical Heritage. ...
The form of the public health system in India is a three tiered pyramid-like structure consisting primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare services. The content of India's health system is mono-cultural and based on western bio-medicine. Authors discuss need for health sector reforms in the wake of the fact that despite huge investment, the public health system is not delivering. Today, 70% of the population pays out of pocket for even primary healthcare. Innovation is the need of the hour. The Indian government has recognized eight systems of healthcare viz., Allopathy, Ayurveda, Siddha, Swa-rigpa, Unani, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, and Yoga. Allopathy receives 97% of the national health budget, and 3% is divided amongst the remaining seven systems. At present, skewed funding and poor integration denies the public of advantage of synergy and innovations arising out of the richness of India's Medical Heritage. Health seeking behavior studies reveal that 40-70% of the population exercise pluralistic choices and seek health services for different needs, from different systems. For emergency and surgery, Allopathy is the first choice but for chronic and common ailments and for prevention and wellness help from the other seven systems is sought. Integrative healthcare appears to be the future framework for healthcare in the 21(st) century. A long-term strategy involving radical changes in medical education, research, clinical practice, public health and the legal and regulatory framework is needed, to innovate India's public health system and make it both integrative and participatory. India can be a world leader in the new emerging field of "integrative healthcare" because we have over the last century or so assimilated and achieved a reasonable degree of competence in bio-medical and life sciences and we possess an incredibly rich and varied medical heritage of our own.
This article provides global and Indian scenario with strengths and limitations of present health care system. Affordability, accessibility and availability of health care coupled with disproportionate growth and double burden of diseases have become major concerns in India. This article emphasizes need for mindset change from illness-disease-drug centric curative to person-health-wellness centric preventive and promotive approaches. It highlights innovation deficit faced pharmaceutical industry and drugs being withdrawn from market for safety reasons. Medical pluralism is a growing trend and people are exploring various options including modern, traditional, complementary and alternative medicine. In such a situation, knowledge from Ayurveda, yoga, Chinese medicine and acupuncture may play an important role. We can evolve a suitable model by integrating modern and traditional systems of medicine for affordable health care. In the larger interest of global community, Indian and Chinese systems should share knowledge and experiences for mutual intellectual enrichments and work together to evolve a novel model of integrative medicine.
