Ayurveda Hospital Management Association (AHMA) in Kerala will soon kick start a training programme for resident doctors and staff nurses of its member hospitals to manage common emergency situations such as difficulty in breathing, sudden vomiting, hypertension, body pain etc. affecting the patients admitted in the Ayurveda hospitals.

The training protocols include methods of Ayurveda and allopathy and will be carried out in association with allopathy doctors who are interested to support Indian systems. The programme will be started from January 2012 in selected hospitals and gradually extended to all the member hospitals, said Dr Baby Krishnan, general secretary of AHMA.

According to him, AHMA, an association of over one thousand Ayurveda hospitals in Kerala, unveils the plan to equip all the Ayurveda physicians to manage such emergencies so as to retain the patients in their own hospitals rather than sending them to allopathy hospitals in the name of efficient treatment. Either because of minor side effects or of other simple reasons the patients admitted in the Ayurveda hospitals get nausea or suffocation or high blood pressure. Then they are being sent to, or taken away by their stand-bys, to allopathic hospitals for immediate medical care. Such situations adversely affect the genuineness of the age old Indian system and of the prestige of the physicians attending the patients. The training program will put an end to this degrading practice and the doctors and the nurses will work together to stabilize the patient’s condition after proper diagnosis and initiate treatment, he said.

Dr Baby Krishnan said the association is against all kinds of OTC products marketed by certain manufacturing companies claiming solutions to various chronic diseases. No member hospital of his association encourages such products sold through wide publicity, even though their manufacturers are members of AHMA.

The office-bearers of the hospital association has recently called on the state health minister and reiterated their demand that the controversial Kerala Ayurveda Health Centres (Issue of Licence and Control) Act, 2007 should not be implemented without considering the opinion of the association. The former LDF government in the state had put aside the implementation plan considering the request of hospital managements. They said any such plan to regulate the ayurvedic hospitals could be taken on the basis of the soon to be implemented central act, Clinical Establishment Act, and not on a separate act only for Kerala.

While enumerating their future plans, AHMA secretary said they have submitted a project to the Kerala government for its consideration that a two year academic course to create qualified nurses and pharmacists for Ayurveda could be conducted with the help of well established IP hospitals. The government should conduct the courses and issue certificates. Currently all the Ayurveda hospitals are facing shortage of nurses and pharmacists.