Integrative Medicine in J&K: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

India, the cradle of civilization has always been an  epicenter of medical pluralism. India gifted the world with  some of the popular health care systems which includes  Ayurveda, Yoga and Siddha and disciplines of Unani and  Sowa Rigpa (Amchi). These organized systems of health  care evolved on this great land to be propagated all across  the world. The beauty of medical pluralism is that these  systems have so deeply in grained in the Indian culture that  even after the wider popularization of western biomedical  medicine, a great proportion of Indian population seek  health care from these systems of medicine vis a vis  biochemical medicine which laid the foundation of  integrative medicine in India. In recent years, with the  increasing burden of communicable and non communicable diseases, health care policy makers have  realized that a single system of health care is not sufficient  to provide holistic health and cater the health needs of an  individual or a community, which changed the focus of  health care policy makers to look towards the idea of  integrative medicine. In the recent years, due to emergence  of Covid-19 pandemic, the global upsurge of utilization of  Ayush and Complementary and Alternative interventions  for prevention and management of Covid-19 has been  registered. Public health agencies in India promoted the  use of integrated medical interventions in order to tackle  this global health problem when there was no vaccine on  the horizon. Patients and physicians worldwide use  integrative medicine for the management of Non communicable diseases in order to reverse it or stop its  progression. It is therefore necessary to understand the term  in the larger perspective of health care and its scope in the  health care delivery system for better public health  outcomes.