A three-day exhibition to raise public awareness on Siddha medicines and treatment modalities began at the Government Siddha Medical College here on Friday.
“Siddha-2010-Herbal Health Care Expo,” hosted by the Scientific Forum-Students Association of the Siddha Medical College, is being held to help people acquire an integrative approach to herbal medicine in daily life. It also seeks to create awareness about herbal home remedies, healthy living and conservation of medicinal plants.
Plenty of opportunities
Launching the event, Finance Minister K. Anbazhagan, said there were plenty of opportunities for the growth of Siddha medicine. The Government, he promised, would support the development of the system of medicine integral to the Tamil ethos.
Noting that Siddha was in no way inferior to any other system of medicine, Mr. Anbazhagan said public awareness of the efficacy of Siddha treatment for various contemporary disorders remained low.
Standards
He called upon the fraternity of Siddha practitioners and students to strive towards raising the standards of treatment and credibility of the modalities.
The onus is on the Siddha fraternity to collate demonstrable evidence of the efficacy of Siddha and showcase the results to the world.
He pointed out that while the Chinese had successfully integrated allopathy with indigenous medicine, the same could not be said about Indian systems of medicines.
Mr. Anbazhagan's advice to students was to pursue Siddha with devotion and launch research on the efficacy of the medicines on a broader spectrum of diseases, while his suggestion to practitioners was to refer patients not responding to Siddha medicine to doctors of other streams.
Magazine, CD launched
The Minister also launched a magazine and a CD on herbal medicine on the occasion.
Ramesh Kumar Khanna, Principal Secretary, Indian Medicine and Homoeopathy, called for efforts to raise the public acceptance of Siddha.
Standardisation of drugs and transparency in the formulations would help increase public confidence in the system of healing, he said.
He also stressed the imperative to disseminate Siddha to other States and abroad.
Case studies
Jayaprakash Narayanan, College Vice-Principal, presented three case studies to show how Siddha modalities had helped patients revive platelet count.
A.M. Abdul Khader, College Principal, said the exhibition was an important way of connecting with the public and setting the stage for future growth of the system of medicine.
