Karnataka government has granted funds to the tune of Rs. 32.90 crore for upgrading the Directorate of Ayush. While Rs. 350 lakh is sanctioned under Plan expenses, Rs 2860.90 lakh is under the non plan expenditure.

Much of the state's expenditure will be utilized at the Ayush medical college teaching hospitals, Dr BN Prakash, director, department of Ayush, government of Karnataka told Pharmabiz.

Presently, Karnataka has 43 Ayurveda colleges out of which three are government colleges, and 5 are aided. There are four Unani colleges (one government and three unaided). Out of the 10 homoeopathy colleges, one is government owned and nine are unaided. Of the four naturopathy institutes, one is government and other remaining are unaided.

In Ayurveda, there are 76 hospitals and 76 dispensaries with a bed strength of 1,162. For Unani care, there are 51 dispensaries and 11 hospitals with a bed strength of 202.

In homoeopathy, there are 43 dispensaries and 10 hospitals with a bed strength of 135 and Naturopathy has 5 dispensaries and 6 hospitals with a bed strength of 41. Totally there are 639 dispensaries in the Ayush sector with 103 hospitals and 1,545 beds.

Out of the 2,441 Primary Heath Centres, 202 Ayush wings offering all systems of Indian medicine are being set up under a Union government grant scheme disbursed last year and to be commissioned in March 2008. There is a format issued by the Union government that for a Rs. 35 lakh investment is for a 10-bed facility, Rs 22 lakh centre is for regimented therapies and Rs. 10 lakh is for only out patient departments. These are coming up in the 27 districts where the 21 district hospitals offering only a allopathic care and at locations which do not have a dedicated Ayush hospital. The government is in the process of hiring 21 Ayush doctors to man each of the centres.

Early this year, 18 Ayurveda colleges at Mangalore, Davangere, Bidar, Bellary and Badami among others have been derecognized on the grounds of lack of infrastructure and teaching staff. Out of the 18 colleges, three colleges cannot offer post graduation and at 15 colleges undergraduate courses are banned. The colleges were given three years time to seek recognition before December 2006, but failed to do leading to no admissions from this academic year 2007-08. "Nearly 600 seats are lost for students seeking admission to BAMS. The ban on admission is a step to improve the standard of education which could be better," said Dr Prakash.

The colleges has a serious manpower crunch and the Directorate hired 80 lecturers on contract basis along with other staff.

For the future, the directorate of Ayush wings in 175 taluks which will cover the 27 districts. This will allow patients to access facilities for treatment and also create an awareness on the alternative system of medicine.