‘We respect Ayurveda, but surgery domain of experts’

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 16

After a preliminary meeting and a strike on December 11 in response to the complete bandh call by the IMA on the issue of Mixopathy, IMA doctors in the district are now adopting the wait and watch policy over the controversial issue.

While OPDs and elective surgeries remained closed on December 11 in response to the national bandh call, doctors say they were with IMA’s national unit’s stance on the issue as it concerns the Centre.

Jalandhar — Asia’s biggest medicare hub thrives on services by allopathic doctors. It is also a medical tourism hub with super specialty centres catering to both NRIs and domestic patients from the neighbouring states of Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. In a city with myriad medical experts, Centre’s newest notification has been met with apprehension and skepticism.

Postgraduate students of certain streams of Ayurveda were authorised to perform 58 surgical procedures as per a gazette notification issued by the Central Council of Indian Medicine (CCIM), a Ministry of AYUSH statutory body recently.

Dr Navjot Dahiya, president, IMA Punjab, said: “Our local bodies take call on local issues, but in this case we are following the call of the national body. We are not against any stream of medicine. We respect all streams of medicine, but we just want all doctors to practice the very stream they have been trained in. A regular doctor completes his studies then does a three-year residency and then does a further fellowship and super specialisation. A surgical or super specialist doctor has a learning curve of an average 11 to 12 years. The Ayush doctors should get trained for as many years to have expertise in surgery. Citizens have a right to choose people who are fully qualified. We welcome all doctors to conduct surgeries but first their qualification should be on a par with doctors currently conducting surgeries. Rational educational policy with equal chances to all. In current form, mixopathy will open ways for ayurvedic doctors to operate with existing qualifications. The question is can they claim as much expertise in surgeries as doctors who studied 12 years do?”

District IMA president Dr Pankaj Paul said: “We are going by our national body since it is a Central issue. We kept OPDs closed in response to the national call and we shall abide by the national body’s further instructions. Having said that, the recent notification denotes a significant change. As a pediatrician, I can’t carry out a cesarean surgery. Different horse should have different courses. We can’t mix and match both. Finally, the layman will have to decide who he wants to do his surgery.”

“The question is what is the use of studying for three-and-a-half-years and doing three years’ masters in surgery if an ayurvedic doctor can also do the same thing in much less time? We could rather have something known as Indiopathy. Integrate all this and create a new stream. I am all for ayurvedic system of medicine. But major surgeries need years of training and expertise and are the domain of experts. Ayurvedic doctors themselves also know their limitations well.”