AYUSH Aims To Triple SIze Of Sector In 5 Years - Secretary Kotecha
What is the Government and Ministry of AYUSH doing to amplify the work in this sector?
Government of India has launched the ‘Service Sector Scheme’ with an INR 5000 Crore commitment, out of which the Ministry of Ayush got a grant of 769 Crore from Niti Aayog. With this amount, the plan is to upgrade the AYUSH service sector to match international level services and to promote people to come from different parts of the world to receive the services in India.
Thousands of people travel to India out of which 25 per cent of them avail AYUSH services and hence we need to upgrade the infrastructure further keeping in mind Health tourism.
Under this project, daycare,10 bedded and 50 beds can get small loans with subsidies in loan interest if they comply with the benchmarks of NABH.
With IRDA also, we are planning to get insurance for at least OPD and daycare services. If this gets implemented, we will witness an increase in the manufacturing of medicines, and other products as well.
How is the Ministry of Ayush promoting jobs and entrepreneurship?
Another key point of this service sector scheme is promoting and training entrepreneurship. We have signed an MoU with Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) for providing customised entrepreneurship programs for our professionals. The tie-up will lead to the introduction of 50 courses of 2 day-like symposiums across the country within a year.
One more component of the scheme is to train AYUSH paramedics as we have doctors but not them in the hospitals and at other centres. Earlier, skill development was absent in the AYUSH sector but now we’re working with the skill ministry which helps in preparing thousands of AYUSH professionals every year to meet the gap between demand and supply.
How the Ministry of Ayush adapting to technology?
The scheme looks at the view of making everything IT-enabled as IT and AI can be applied anywhere to improve productivity. The ministry is using AYUSH with hospital Information Management System (AHMIS) and is creating a cloud-based information centre to get the major outcomes from the vast data generated from various hospitals and centres of treatment. Data mining and analysation will bring a lot of information/evidence.
We’re also sending our professionals to Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDEC), Pune which provides them software training. Now, with this training, the human resource at the ministry is IT-enabled which are even creating IOS and Android APPs.
What are the future plans of the Ministry?
In 2017, Prime Minister Modi at the inauguration of the All India Institute of Ayurveda, Sarita Vihar said ‘IT took 20 years to reach this level but now Ayush revolution is coming up and it will take just 5 years to match the level.’ Now, we’re seeing this as a benchmark as PM has given a goal and we’ve to achieve it.
We’re currently trying to achieve two goals. One is to triple the size of the sector in 5 years. Last year it was $ 3 Billion in India and will thrive to reach to $ 10 B by 2022.
We’re also working on Modi’s vision of tripling the farmer's income. As a vertical of the scheme, we’re looking at the supply chain management of medicines and raw material required for the medicine. We have developed e-CHARAK- a platform to enable information exchange between various stakeholders involved in the medicinal plants' sector. This platform will improve in the traceability and certifications and hence will penetrate the market dominated by China right now. We will be giving responsibility to 12,500 AYUSH health centres in the next 3 years under Ayuhsman Bharat. Currently, we’re targeting 2500 centres in next 100 days which is 10 per cent of the total Ayushman Bharat coverage.
We’re working with states as state hospitals are the first level of health care and AYUSH centres will be implemented as secondary care.
How are you maintaining the standards of the medicine of Ayush medicine?
We have the Pharmacopoeia commission for Indian medicine & Homoeopathy which is a regulatory body and publishes benchmarks for products. Currently, the licenses are provided by the state government and are maintained by the benchmark of pharmacopoeia.
If any consumer wants to check the authenticity of any product, they should look out for the license provided by Pharmacopoeia. Further, anyone can send the products to a drug testing laboratory to verify the chemical contents.
How the ministry is working to help India attain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set-up by the United Nations?
For SDG 2 which talks about nutrition, Ministry of AYUSH under the National Nutrition Mission has a lot of pilot projects going on across the country. We’re Improving the Ayurvedic understanding of food among the common masses.
The Ministry is also providing Ashwagandha fortified milk, ayurvedic fortified biscuits in the mid-day meal programs. Another pilot project is giving out a selected variety of raisins to eliminate anaemia.
For SDG 3 which is universal health coverage, we are working with the health ministry and under various national missions as well. Also, we are supporting the drug industry with the medicinal part component as well.
For the increase of medicinal infrastructure, we have more than 27000 Ayush physicians working under National Health Mission across the nation looking after the health of the citizens even in the remotest part of the country.
We’re also a part of the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) which piloted across the country on June 6. Under the project, in six districts, we have screened more than one million people and out of them, more than 1.5 lakh patients’ data were recorded in the last three years which helped to understand the Ayush modalities including Yoga.
The project gave surprising results as we were even able to stop the intake of medicine, improve the physical and mental health of the patients, and witnessed increased productivity among the visitors.
