Tribal research programme documenting folk medicine sys: Govt

The AYUSH Ministry is implementing a tribal health care research programme aimed at collecting information about folk medicines and traditional practices from different parts of the country, Rajya Sabha was informed today.
"A research council - Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) of AYUSH ministry has been implementing a Tribal Health Care Research Programme (THCRP)...Which aims at collecting information on folk medicines and traditional practices prevalent in different parts of the country besides extending health care services to tribal population," AYUSH Minister Shripad Yesso Naik said.
He said the programme is presently being implemented through 16 peripheral institutes and units of CCRAS spread across the country.

CCRAS through its institutes in Itanagar, Bangalore, Jhansi and Tari Khet in Uttarakhand is also conducting medico-ethno botanical survey in different regions across the country for documenting and publishing the same from time to time.
"The data regarding tribal medicine and practices documented so far are under the process of validation," he said.
In addition, National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) has also supported some research and development projects on ethno-botanical records for Assam, Karnataka, Mizoram, Manipur, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, on medicinal usage of local flora by tribal people.
"The NMPB has developed a database on Indian medicinal plants which contain information about the habitat and therapeutic uses of more than 7,000 medicinal plants species. This database is in public domain for access to the existing information," he said.

To prevent misappropriation of the country's traditional medicinal knowledge, Ministry of AYUSH in collaboration with CSIR has established a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) which entails transcription of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha codified texts into English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish, he said.