New Delhi, Oct. 3 (PTI): Union Minister Jitendra Singh Saturday said the coronavirus pandemic has shifted medical fraternity's attention to integrated healthcare and now physicians across the world are looking for optimum synergy among different streams of medical management.
He said during the Covid-19 pandemic, several allopathic medical professionals who were hitherto skeptic about other systems of medicine, started showing interest in immunity-building drugs and resistance boosters from Ayurveda and homeopathy.
If every adversity is accompanied with a virtue, as far as medical fraternity is concerned, the pandemic had prompted all the different streams of medical practice to come together and find an optimum meeting point, said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel.
He was addressing a global conference on integrated healthcare and communication in which experts from different countries participated.
Covid-19 has shifted the medical fraternity's attention to integrated healthcare and now physicians across the world are looking for optimum synergism among different streams of medical management, according to a Personnel Ministry statement.
Even during the pre-Covid era, it had been proven with evidence that in the treatment of non-communicable diseases, like for example, Diabetes-Mellitus, the dose of insulin or oral anti-diabetic drugs could be brought down with the adjuvant practice of certain yoga asana and lifestyle modifications available in naturopathy, Singh said.
However, there was a certain amount of skepticism in certain quarters, which has been done away with in the face of the Covid-19 challenge, he added.
India, said Singh, in the first half of 20th century was known to have a high prevalence of infectious disease and at that time non-pharmacological practices like maintenance of hygiene used to be a part of the prescription.
But, if somewhere down the line it had got forgotten, Covid had revived these practices through social distancing and hand wash, and the entire world is constrained to adopt them, he said.
Singh recalled that ever since Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister of India, he has brought to the centrestage the virtues of indigenous system of medical management, the statement said.
He said, it was Modi, who brought a unanimous resolution in the United Nations to observe International Day of Yoga, as a result of which yoga has reached virtually every household across the world.
It is again Prime Minister Modi who created a separate Ministry of AYUSH, considering the importance of indigenous medical management system, Singh said.
Notable among others who spoke during the webinar included Professor Elissa Epel from University of California, Peter Wayne from Harvard, Susan Bauer Wu from Latin America, Professor Vikram Patel from Harvard and others, the statement said.