Right raw material – A must for quality alternative medicines

Availability of quality raw materials must be the priority for ensuring high standards of alternative medicines such as ayurveda, unani, siddha and homeopathy (AYUSH). Review meetings should be held from time to time with all stakeholders to understand the bottlenecks they face in taking up large cultivation of medical plants and inter‐sectoral coordination must be taken up in right earnest for issues impacting medicinal plants cut across many sectors. The State Medicinal Plants Boards (SMPBs) could be the nodal agencies for this.

The government has established the National AYUSH Mission (NAM), which envisages better access to AYUSH services through increase in number of hospitals and dispensaries ensuring availability of alternative medicines and trained manpower. 20% of total available resources are earmarked for flexible components to enable the state governments to focus on need based activities to promote and develop AYUSH systems in the states/UTs.

The enhancement in the number of upgraded educational institutions, increase in the number of pharmacies, drug testing laboratories and improved drug enforcement mechanism in terms of making available quality standards paraphernalia will ensure the availability of qualified practitioners and safe drugs to the society. For this purpose, the state governments are also expected to establish the AYUSH administrative infrastructure at state, district and block levels.

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