Expressing solidarity with the department of Ayush, the Chennai based Centre for Traditional Medicines and Research (CTMR) has wanted the Union health ministry not to delete the provision in the amendment to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act with respect to the use of prefix and suffix with names of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicines.

Adding a term either before the name or after the name of the classical drug will help convert the original medicine as mentioned in the classical texts of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani systems into proprietary ones.  The decision to ban the use of prefix and suffix was taken by ‘Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Drug Technical Advisory Board' (AUSDTAB) after a long deliberation.

CTMR’s intervention and comment has come in the wake of a memorandum given to the Ayush secretary by an association of ayurvedic manufacturers from Kerala urging him to withdraw the ban introduced by the department on the use of additional terms as adjectives. When the students of Ayurveda and Siddha are taught only about generic products from classical texts, use of the brands with adjectives is not logical, argues CTMR.

Dr T Thirunarayanan, secretary of CTMR justified the decision of ASUDTAB by quoting example of generic use of allopathic drugs, and the instructions laid down by the government for the use of generic names for prescriptions. He said in traditional medicine field additional terms such as ‘extra, special, super, gold, plus etc are used by manufacturing companies for commercial purpose and they are all irrational.

This suffix and the prefix provide unfair advantage to big companies which promote their brands by advertisements and seldom help the smaller companies which do ethical promotions through doctors.

With the gazette notification of Ayush dated 1st September 2014, several companies have deleted the extra terms from the labels of their formulations. Even for the classical Chyavanaprasam Lehyam, different manufacturers have used different names such as ‘Special Chyavanaprasam’, “Chyavanaprasam Gold’, ‘Chyvanaprasam Super’, etc. There are ‘Maha Rasnaadi Kashaayam’, Cheriya Raasnaadi Kashaayam, etc, The classical version is only Raasnaadi kashaayam, said the Ayurveda drugs controller at Thiruvananthapuram, Dr P John.

He said the drug made out of ‘Safed Musli’ by Kunnath Pharmaceuticals is different, so they need not delete the term ‘extra’ as it is a patented name.