The Madhya Pradesh government has constituted a team to look into AYUSH doctors taking up modern medicine and prescribing allopathic drugs at private hospitals.
“The services of AYUSH doctors are being used for night duty at most of the hospitals in the private sector,” reads an order dated September 13 on the constitution of the team. “In reality what is going on, the department has no information regarding this.”
According to the rules, says the order, ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, unani, siddha and homoeopathy (AYUSH) doctors can’t prescribe allopathic drugs.
Though allopathy hospitals can employ AYUSH doctors, they cannot be allowed to prescribe drugs, State AYUSH Department Additional Chief Secretary Shikha Dubey told The Hindu. “At present, we don’t know how many such doctors are there, and for how long have they been prescribing allopathic drugs. The team will submit a report within a month,” she said.
Unlike many States, Madhya Pradesh hasn’t yet permitted AYUSH doctors to practice modern medicine, but they could prescribe 72 drugs at integrated dispensaries in rural areas, only after passing a six-month course.
States like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand have allowed the practice dwelling upon Rule 2 (ee) (iii) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, after the Supreme Court in the 1987 case of Dr. Mukhtiar Chand allowed it by the means of State orders.
‘Clear fraud’
“You could have called it negligence if it was by an allopathy doctor. This is clear fraud; it is criminal,” said Anand Rai, who last year exposed several AYUSH doctors at private hospitals in Indore deputed at intensive care units to attend to emergency cases and perform surgeries. “At private hospitals, patients are fleeced on an hourly basis. Just to make more money, they employ AYUSH doctors,” said Dr. Rai, the Vyapam scam whistle-blower. “How do you expect someone practising herbal medicine to perform complicated procedures on patients?”
Santanu Sen, Indian Medical Association national president, said it was in principle against allowing the practice and Section 32 of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which “promoted quackery”.
When told many IMA-affiliated hospitals had employed AYUSH doctors in the past, Dr. Sen clarified: “We are an organisation of around four lakh doctors. If anyone violates the IMA’s stand, that’s just an individual agenda.”
Highlighting lack of AYUSH infrastructure, Ramavtar Chaudhary, national general secretary, AYUSH Medical Association said, “The government, whose institutions are allopathy-centric, pushes our doctors to take it up just to show it meets the WHO doctor-population ratio.”
Still, there is one doctor for 16,996 people in Madhya Pradesh, according to the National Health Profile 2018, against the World Health Organization’s prescribed ratio of 1 for 1,000. The NITI Aayog in May had said the country was expected to reach the norm by 2024.
In colleges itself, he added, students were told they could switch to allopathy later. “What else will they practice in the absence of adequate number of AYUSH colleges and facilities at every level of healthcare? The Centre should be clear on allowing medical integration across the country.”
