A group of doyens of Ayurveda industry in Kerala has jointly given a memorandum to the chief minister of the state urging the government to expedite the process of forming a separate Department for Ayush in Kerala.

The demand of the Ayurveda fraternity has been reverberating across the state for the last several years through various organisations of Ayush physicians, manufacturers, researchers and students, but so far it has fallen on deaf ears of the state government. The pioneers of the industry have now approached the government for a concrete decision in the matter.

Padmabhooshan Dr P K Warrier (Kottakkal Arya vaidyasala), Padmabhooshan Dr E T Narayanan Mooss (Vaidyaratnam Group), Padmashri Dr P R Krishnakumar, (Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, Coimbatore), Fr. Shibu Puthenpurakkal (Amala Ayurveda Hospital), Swami Gururatnam Jnaanathapaswi (Shanthigiri Ashram), Dr P K Mohanlal (Ex-DAM, Tvm), Dr D Ramanathan (Seetharam Ayurvea Pharmacy), Ashtavaidyan Alathoor Narayanan Nambi (SNA Oushadhasala), Dr NPP Namboothiri (Sreedhareeyam Ayurveda Research Centre) and Dr Babu Vasudevan (Madhava Pharmaceuticals) are the industry captains who have signed the memorandum to the government.

The Central government has now brought out a new Health Policy which is different in so many ways from the Health Policy of 2002. The present policy gives immense importance to the country’s traditional medical system, Ayush, and if the state wanted to get the benefits of the projects, it should have a separate department of Ayush.  The government has been promising the Ayurveda fraternity for years that Ayush department would be set up, but so far no positive step has been taken, said Dr D Ramanathan of Seetharam Ayurveda Pharmacy.

“Once the new health policy is implemented, more importance will be given to research in traditional medicines. Then preference will be given to Kerala because more researches are held in Ayurveda which is Kerala’s traditional medicine system. The Central Ayush minister has recently announced that the Central government will allot an amount of Rs. 4000 crore in the coming budget for the benefit of Ayush systems. If Kerala has to get a lion's share of it, we should have a separate department for Ayush”, Dr Ramanathan opined.