NEW DELHI: For the first-time, the centre has announced a comprehensive set of uniform standards for Ayush healthcare services with the aim to provide quality-oriented healthcare to people in the country.
The Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) for Ayush hospitals, which was released on Monday, focus on infrastructure development, availability of necessary equipment and skilled professionals and support staff.
Apart from listing essential medicines under Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Unani, and Siddha, the standards also set up norms for a robust system for quality assurance.
India has around 3,844 Ayush hospitals, 60,943 beds under Ayush hospitals, 36,848 dispensaries and 7.56 lakh registered Ayush practitioners.
Speaking at the release of the standards, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that the government is following an integrative approach so as to take the best practices from both the disciplines, Ayurveda and Allopathy.
“The government is working towards providing quality-oriented healthcare towards the needs of the people of the country,” he said, adding that in this direction, IPHS were published by the ministry as a set of uniform standards to improve the quality of health care delivery.
“By adopting these reforms, it is expected that the states/UTs will be able to develop AYUSH health care services with set standards and quality infrastructure, thereby enabling the public to avail the benefits of AYUSH medical services for all healthcare,” he added.
Officials said the idea behind the standards was to enhance services at Ayush hospitals by strengthening key components such as infrastructure, human resources, capacity building, medicines, diagnostics, equipment and governance.
The Ayush ministry is also upgrading 12,500 Ayush dispensaries/Sub-Health Centres to Ayushman Arogya Mandir (Ayush) through states/UTs.
Mandaviya also launched an AYUSH-Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Advanced Centre for five integrated health research in four AIIMS.
While the two research projects will come up in AIIMS Delhi, the other three will be in AIIMS Jodhpur, Nagpur and Rishikesh.
“Collaborative research in Ayush is extremely important as it bridges the gap between traditional knowledge and modern scientific research, promoting a synergistic approach to healthcare,” he added.
“Strategic collaboration between Ayush and ICMR aims to advance integrative health research, integrate traditional Ayush practices with modern medical science and take India to the forefront of holistic healthcare innovations,” he added.
These centres will be set up to develop integrative health research through integrating AYUSH system with conventional bio-medicine, and modem technology to bring integrative health care to the people for improved patient outcome through innovations related to diagnostics, preventive, health promotive as well as treatment methods.