Ayurvedic Doctors Can Now Practice General Surgery Alongside Ortho & Dentistry

The Centre in its gazette notification allowed Ayurvedic PG students to receive formal training for General Surgery along with Orthopedic and Dentistry. The development has come after the Central Council of Indian Medicine amended the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016.

Now the Post Graduate (PG) students of Ayurveda would perform a variety of general surgery, including orthopedic, ophthalmology, ENT, and dental as the central government has okayed it.

The Centre in its gazette notification allowed Ayurvedic PG students to receive formal training for such procedures. The training modules for surgical procedures will be added to the curriculum of Ayurvedic studies.

The development has come after the Central Council of Indian Medicine amended the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016, to include the aforementioned regulation to allow the PG students of Ayurveda for practicing the general surgery.

"The Central Council of Indian Medicine, with the previous sanction of the Central Government, hereby makes the following regulations further to amend the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016," the gazette notification read.

The act has been renamed Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Amendment Regulations, 2020. "During the period of study, the PG scholar of Shalya and Shalakya shall be practically trained to acquaint (themselves) with as well aa independently perform the following activities so that after completion of his PG degree, he is able to perform the following procedures (list of the procedures) independently," the gazette notification stated.

The notification informed that the students will be trained in two streams of surgery and would be awarded titles of MS (Ayurved) Shalya Tantra -- (General Surgery and MS (Ayurved) Shalakya Tantra (Disease of Eye, Ear, Nose, Throat, Head, and Oro-Dentistry).

The latest move by the Centre is an addition to the host of decisions taken amid pandemics which shows an impending paradigm shift in healthcare from modern medicine to the traditional form.

Annulling the Medical Council of India to form National Medical Commission and introducing the Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Bill, 2020, which allows assorted paramedics to practice medicine independently -- are a few of the decisions which have put the modern medicine practitioners in deep concern regarding their future of healthcare.

The Indian Medical Association has been openly opposing such policy moves by the Centre, especially the plan to mix modern medicine with the traditional systems of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), in coming years, as envisaged by the Centre.

Dr. Rajan Sharma, President, IMA had earlier stated that an integrative system of medicine would create a "Khichdi medical system" and would produce hybrid doctors. The apex body of private practitioners of modern medicine had also condemned the center's ambitious one nation one system policy in medical education and called it a cocktail of disaster.