Rohit Shishodia
The World Medical Association (WMA) has sought Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention on the Central Council of Indian Medicine’s notification that allows Ayurveda practitioners to perform surgeries after training.

In a letter to PM Modi and Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, the WMA has stressed that allowing indigenous practitioners to do surgery is highly unsafe. It is also profoundly unethical, especially when presented as a substitute for science-based clinical treatments offered by properly educated physicians, added WMA.

“There are currently thousands of Indian physicians working in many countries of the world, a clear demonstration of the value of medical education in India and the reputation of Indian physicians. Watering down science-based medical education in India or recognizing traditional practitioners as physicians will harm this recognition globally. But worse, it would be a terrible service to your population to whom you offer this as an alternative to real medicine,” reads the letter signed by WMA president Dr David Barbe.

The WMA has urged PM Modi not to continue with such plans but rather to foster the scientific study of traditional practices of Indian medicine by real scientists and with scientific methodology and to integrate those practices that demonstrate evidence into school medicine.

“By that, such work would be a service not only to Indian people but to humankind,” said WMA.

According to WMA, empirical, traditional medicine may well point to reproducible and safe treatment practices, but only those tested proven with scientific methodology.