Establishing integrated medical facilities at primary health centres of the country is a well thought out national initiative of the Union health ministry to provide medical assistance to people in rural and other remote areas. Health ministry’s initiative is in the context of the failure of the state governments to provide basic medical facilities through PHCs and other public health establishments. PHCs were unable to function effectively because of the non availability of qualified medical practitioners and paramedical staff to work in rural areas. This is despite the stipulation of two years of compulsory rural practice for fresh medical graduates. Most of the medical students pass out with MBBS degree somehow manage to avoid rural practice. Launching of the scheme of co-locating Ayush facilities with allopathic system in PHCs under national rural health mission (NRHM) scheme is one way to address the ineffectiveness of PHCs. Medical practitioners specialised in ayurveda and unani systems of  medicine are easily available in rural settings. A proposal in this regard was submitted to the Union health ministry by the Steering Committee on Ayush some time back. Now, as per a report of the health ministry, Ayush facilities are co-located in 416 district hospitals, 2942 community health centres and 9559 primary health centres of the country till 2011. There is already integrated facilities of Ayush and modern medical systems in the district hospitals of Goa, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. The report says that the states having more than 50 per cent of the district hospitals co-located with Ayush facilities are Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The progress made in co-locating different medical facilities under NRHM in a dozen states in the country is certainly encouraging. When the entire nation is shifting towards a holistic approach for treating ever increasing number of diseases afflicting the people of the country, it is rather strange that allopathic practitioners of Kerala is opposing introduction of co-locating modern medicine and Ayush facilities in PHCs. The Kerala chapter of Indian Medical Association urged the state government to drop the plan to provide services of modern and traditional systems of medicines under one roof in the state. It is a fact that many patients in the state are seeking alternative systems of medicine for their ailments on account of increasing instances of adverse drug reactions of several chemical based drugs. In a country like India, with majority of the population living in rural areas and when patients are turned away from PHCs for want of allopathic practitioners, the relevance and urgency of co-locating different medical systems need to be understood by all the state governments and the medical fraternity. And just because a section of allopathic practitioners is opposing the co-location plan, no state government is justified in dropping the patient friendly project. Kerala government needs to realize this and should go ahead with its plan for co-locating Ayush facilities in PHCs.