Indian medicine students get a fillip

Times Of India, 30/08/2011

CHENNAI: Students of Indian medicine will be allowed to study modern medicine and surgery, health minister V S Vijay has said. The minister, who is also the pro-chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, said that the university's decision to scrap allopathic contents from ayurveda, siddha and unani courses would be withdrawn.

The decision was made after the minister held a meeting with senior health department and university officials, practitioners of Indian systems of medicine and students at the secretariat on Monday. In July, the university had passed a resolution in the governing council revising the syllabus for Indian medicine. Vice-chancellor Dr Mayil Vahanan Natarajan said the university would remove surgery from the nomenclature of the degrees awarded to Indian medicine students. So, students would be only Bachelor of siddha/ unani/ ayurveda/ homeopathy medicine and not bachelor of siddha unani/ ayurveda/ homeopathy medicine and surgery. On August 17, the Central Council of Indian Medicine, a regulatory body, threatened to withdraw recognition to the state medical university.

Students of Indian medicine have been boycotting classes for a week as they feared their courses would be invalid. On Saturday, students approached commissioner for Indian medicine A Mohammed Aslam and argued that the council had allowed students of Indian medicine to study parts of modern medicine to enable them to become better doctors. But the university deleted surgery, pharmacology and large sections of orthopedics and ophthalmology. If the university is not recognized, students will not be registered as doctors, they said.

Council member (siddha) Dr B Muthukumar said the university did not consider the views of the standing academic board. Six Indian medicine doctors, members of the board, advised the university not to delete allopathic contents from siddha, unani and ayurveda. "They chose to go with the views of six allopathic doctors," he said.

To end the stalemate between the university and the Indian medicine doctors the minister called the university officials for talks on Monday. "The syllabus and nomenclature are fixed by the Central Council of Indian Medicine. We told the university officials that they can't tamper with it," said Vijay.

"We have also told the Indian medicine students and doctors that they were being taught some parts of modern medicine only for the sake of acquiring knowledge and they can't prescribe allopathic medicines," he said. The University has asked the state government to list out the surgeries Indian medicine practitioners are permitted to do. "They shall not use allopathic anesthetic drugs," said university vice-chancellor Dr Natarajan.

Students of Indian medicine said they were happy with the health department's decision. "We will be back in classes from Tuesday," said R Thyagarajan, a student .

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