The 6th World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) starting this week in the national capital will feature a Traditional Healers Meeting during its initial two days, bringing to the fore the importance of local health traditions that use herbal concoctions as the key to curing diseases ranging from asthma to bone fractures to kidney stones to those affecting livestock that is integral to rural economy.
The WAC at Pragati Maidan will host six sessions of the meet to be attended by close to 200 healers including tribal practitioners on November 6 and 7 at the sprawling venue on Mathura Road. To be inaugurated by Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, the deliberations will lend traditional health practitioners from across India and varied branches of medicine a chance to also share and exchange their knowledge and skills with the international and national participants, according to organisers.
The World Ayurveda Foundation (WAF), which is hosting the four-day event in collaboration with Department of AYUSH under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare besides the Delhi Government, said the WAC would thus proclaim to the international and national stakeholders that India’s policy developments on traditional medicines are in line with one of the eight components of Primary Health care (Alma Ata Declaration 1978 of WHO).
“It is also important that different Indian systems of medicine need to work in tandem with the local health practitioners. This will ensure that healthcare becomes accessible and affordable to every citizen of our country,” pointed out WAF Secretary-general A Jayakumar.
World Ayurveda Congress (WAC), Arogya Expo will set up 20 specialty clinics at the sixth edition of the upcoming event in the national capital to provide free checkups and medicines to the visitors in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of traditional medicine systems. Of these clinics, 14 will be of Ayurveda and one each of Unani, Homoeopathy, Siddha, Yoga, Naturopathy and Sowarigpa/Amchi systems of medicine.
“Specialty clinics have been a major hit in all the editions of WAC with long queues of people thronging these clinics to seek experts’ advice for their wellness. We are hoping for huge footfalls at the Delhi edition too,” said A Jayakumar.
The observations and inferences expected out of the healers’ meet slated to see 15-plus oral presentations would subsequently be placed before the union government to facilitate proposed amendments on its national health policy that would give traditional systems their due, WAC organisers said today.
Jayakumar noted that the upcoming healers meet will be a watershed event, considering that India has more than one million traditional health practitioners across its villages. “Their expertise ranges from treating simplest fever to complex problems such as bone fractures or poisonous bites,” he said.
The healers meet, where TDU Vice-Chancellor Darshan Shankar will deliver the keynote address at the inaugural session, will have two of its four sessions open for the public. The areas of medicine to be discussed would include eye-care, uterus prolapse, kidney stones, asthma, herpes, bone-setting, paediatrics and varma chikitsa, besides ethno-veterinary science.
EP News Bureau– Mumbai
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