The six day Global Holistic Health Summit which was scheduled to be held on November 11-16, 2001 in Bangalore has been postponed to November 2002 in the wake of the US crisis. The summit was being organised by the Bangalore Holistic Medical Centre or Wellness Clinic, as it is also known, which is headed by Dr. Issac Mathai.

The participants mainly from US requested the organizer to reschedule the event on account of the uncertainty in the Asian sub continent. Six hundred participants [400 from abroad and 200 from India] had paid-up for the registration of the event, Dr. Mathai told Pharmabiz.com.

The international summit was to be a platform for a series of pre- and post-lectures on related areas of holistic healing. There needs to be a continuous awareness and exchange of holistic and integrated medicine of the 21st century, said Dr. Mathai.

During the Summit, the Wellness Clinic was all set to inaugurate the International Holistic Health Centre (IHHC) at Whitefield, 16 km from Bangalore. The 150-bed facility will have all the systems of medicine under one roof.

Dr Mathai is the medical director of the Wellness Clinic and a consultant at the Hale Clinic, London, Waverly Clinic, New York and Baltimore Holistic Health Centre, USA. "Our effort is to put into practice the lesser known healing systems and help incorporate this holistic-integrated medical training/education into modern medical education. It is our sincere bid to further the scope of holistic health care systems such as Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Unani and Siddha which are complemented with acupressure, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, Reiki to name a few," he informed.

Bangalore-based Wellness Clinic, which has been the world's first medical center to put into practice holistic medicine, has patients from all over India and abroad seeking medical aid for various diseases and disorders. On why Bangalore was short-listed as the venue for this symposium, Dr. Mathai said he is convinced that the city has had a high-level of awareness for the holistic form of treatment since 1989 after the response from the international conference on Holistic Health and Medicine, which was held here then.