Traditional credibility

India must address quackery in alternative medicine

The ground-breaking ceremony for the establishment of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (GCTM) in Jamnagar, Gujarat, should be a welcome development in a country where millions of Indians rely on alternative medicine for their health needs. In his inauguration speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted the deeper challenge in the global spread of traditional medicine disciplines such as Ayurveda, Unani, a central Asian import, Homeopathy, developed by a German physician, or Siddha, a southern Indian tradition. He underlined the need to ensure traditional Indian medicine meets global standards. This is a vital requirement because such systems have come to be associated closely with fraud and quackery.

Together with such concepts as Vedic math and the study of ancient scientific wisdom, the promotion and dissemination of traditional medicine have been key parts of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s broader socio-cultural agenda. As part of this programme, which included getting a UN-designated World Yoga Day, the government set up in September 2014 the Ministry of Ayush (a composite term encompassing Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy). From one perspective, promoting alternative medicine in a country where the average person’s access to standard allopathic treatment is limited by both reach and expense is unexceptionable. But there are two endemic and related problems associated with this policy.

The first is that in the absence of uniform standards and effective monitoring mechanisms, fraud and quackery are widespread, including the use of harmful steroids in homeopathic doses and Ayurvedic preparations. The WHO’s GCTM could well go some way towards addressing this problem, though these efforts need to be supplemented by viable state-level monitoring mechanisms. No less disturbing is the fact that the government has sought to promote alternative medicine without underlying scientific basis, which only serves to undermine its credibility. In 2020, for instance, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) strongly criticised a government protocol sanctioning Ayurvedic and yoga practices as prevention and cure for asymptomatic and mild Covid patients. The IMA pointed out that the protocol had no scientific basis and amounted to inflicting fraud on the nation. Equally questionable was a move in 2018 to introduce a law enabling Ayurvedic doctors to take “bridging courses” and practise conventional medicine. This was part of the government’s efforts to bridge the chronic shortage of doctors, especially in rural and mofussil areas, a move the IMA described as creating “an army of half-baked doctors”.

Though the move may have been considered an innovative approach to addressing a problem, the fact is that the foundation of traditional medicine, which relies on the body’s immune system and can address a limited range of medical conditions, is strikingly different from the allopathic medical discipline, which also has its limitations. It is a physiological gap that a bridging course cannot fill. It is also worth noting that allopathic doctors are not permitted to prescribe traditional medicines. The GCTM’s mandate, therefore, holds out much promise for the propagation of reliable, low-cost medical treatments for a range of ailments, reducing the dependence of poorer countries in Asia and Africa on venal multinational drug companies. But establishing the credibility of these systems demands that India should focus on reducing rampant quackery too.