The Department of Ayush has initiated efforts to upgrade nine more institutions in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy as National Institutes of Ayush under the central sector scheme to uniformly improve quality of tertiary level healthcare and improve facilities and standards of medical education to meet global demand of Ayush.
The institutes, which would be upgraded to National Institutes through the current and the next Five Year Plans are the Institute of Post Graduate Teaching & Research in Ayurveda, Jamnagar, Gujarat, Govt Ayurvedic College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Govt R A Poddar Ayurvedic College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Govt Ayurvedic College, Patna, Bihar, Rajiv Gandhi Govt PG Ayurveda Colege, Paprola, Himachal Pradesh, Govt Ayurvedic College, Guwahati, Assam, Govt Ayurveda & Unani Tibbiya College, Karol Bagh, New Delhi, Govt Dr A C Homoeopathy Medical College, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa and Govt Nizamia Tibbi College, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.
Detailed project reports on requirements to upgrade these institutions, aiming to achieve the optimum infrastructure in the next five years, would be prepared soon. The project would be divided into two phases, where in the first phase would cover the capital work at equipment required and the salary, stipend and cosumables to be put in place in the current Five Year Plan, posted to end in the financial year 2010-11.
The second phase of upgradation to develop infrastructure to achieve optimum requirements, would commence in the 12th Five Year Plan, starting from the financial year 2011-12. Since these are existing and functioning institutions, the two-phased project would be appropriate for the proposed upgradation, comments Dept of Ayush sources. A call for eligible consultant firms to engage in preparing detailed project report has been issued by the department of late.
Post upgradation, the Ayurvedic institutions could accommodate 100 BAMS, almost 100 MDs and PhDs and 25 nursing students per year, even as the Unani and Homoeopathic institutions would have 100 BUMS/BHMS seats and 35 MD seats for seven subjects per year, uniformly.
The proposed National Institutes are part of the departments effort to upgrade the educational standards in the Ayurveda, Unani and Homoeopathy colleges in the country, strengthen existing research institutions and ensure a time-bound research programme on identified diseases for which these systems have an effective treatment, draw up schemes for promotion, cultivation and regeneration of medicinal plants used in these systems and to evolve pharmacopoeial standards for ISM and Homoeopathy medicines.
Upgrading the institutions in a modular fashion will help the government to fill the real gaps in the field of Ayush medicines and to develop the institutions as centre of excellence focused on fundamental research, drug safety evaluation, standardisation, quality control and scientific validation of Ayush medicine and post graduate and doctoral teaching would be confined to these disciplines, said Ayush sources.
The existing bed strength will be upgraded to 200 for Ayurvedic and Unani institutions and to 100 for Homoeopathy institutions with adequate treatment and diagnostic facilities and full-fledged testing laboratories with complete computer facilities will be in place in each of these institutes to bring in development of the segment in regional level.
At present, the department has eight apex educational institutions established to promote excellence in the Ayush segments - The National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur, Rajasthan, National Institute of Siddha, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, National Institute of Unani Medicine, Bangalore, Karnataka, Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, New Delhi, National Institute of Naturopathy, Pune, Maharashtra, National Institute of Homoeopathy, Kolkata, West Bengal, Rashtriya Ayurved Vidyapeeth, New Delhi and the Institute of Post Graduate Teaching & Research in Ayurveda, Jamnagar, Gujarat.