BENGALURU: The National Integrated Medical Association (NIMA), an all-India association of integrated practitioners of Ayurveda, Unani and Sidda, clarified on Monday that those registered with the Karnataka Ayurveda and Unani Practitioners’ Board and Karnataka Board of Homeopathic System of Medicine should not be considered as quacks, as sections of the media were doing.
Those with a BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery) degree can practise integrated medicine (AYUSH and allopathy), it added.
“An essential part of BAMS is integrated medicine, in which allopathic concepts are not only taught in theory, but they also train the doctors in government hospitals. We intern in different departments. There are certain equipment and procedures that are part of the allopathic system, like giving anaesthesia that even Ayurvedic doctors use to perform their surgeries,” said Dr Bhusanurmath R, president, NIMA, Karnataka.
As per the Karnataka Ayurveda and Unani Practitioners’ Act, 1961, all those doctors who are registered in these boards and have got their degrees from recognised universities are permitted to practise and shouldn’t be termed as quacks, he said.
“There should be no debate on practise of non-allopathic doctors as the Supreme Court is hearing the case on non-allopathic practitioners prescribing allopathic medicines and it is sub-judice,” he said. Recently, the Health and Family Welfare Department decided to fill vacant posts in PHCs with AYUSH doctors as MBBS doctors had not come forward to practise in rural areas.