Will Ayurveda and Western medicine link?

By Dhaneshi Yatawara

Medicine has its own limits. The speed at which the world is growing or the level of sophistication in modern technology can increase with time, but there still remains a faction in modern medicine where it cannot go beyond reality.

In Sri Lanka we have heard many stories of miracles in ayurveda and western medicine where the doctors would go in to new approaches for the betterment of patients. We hardly see an integrated approach among the medical professionals though Sri Lanka owns indigenous medicines that have existed for thousands of years and many other ancient medical practices which we today call with technical term 'complementary and alternative medicine'. In order to find out the best that can be gained with using both the modern medicine as well as complementary and alternative medicine making a healthy nation with these valuable resource that we have in hand, a group of medical professionals from both these segments are creating a common ground to experiment. The Medical Faculty of Rajarata University and the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine are getting together to research on how to use both medical fundamentals to establish a better healthcare facility.

"Our target is to improve the primary healthcare facilities in the country, said Dr. Senaka Pilapitiya of the Rajarata University explaining on the agreement.

This year the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine has given more focus on to researches, according to ministry secretary Lalith Kannangara. "This year through the Government budget we are getting around 300 million rupees for the ayurvedic researches," Kannangara said. "Thus, we hope that this program will support our targets too," he added.

"Our traditional ayurvedic practitioners are doing a great job especially at village level. Ayurvedic practitioners who are working as Community Healthcare Officers are doing a great job. But the recognition is less. Through the new program with the Rajarata University we are hoping that the immense work contributed to the community by our community health officers will get due recognition," Kannangara added.

As Kannangara explained, through this project the ministry wants to get the best of the service of the medical practitioners to the people of the area.

Dr. Senaka Pilapitiya

According to Prof. Sisira Siribaddana of the medical faculty, Rajarata University, this new approach is to educate these community health workers with capacity building. "We equipping them with new skills enabling them to provide a better service to their communities through their own medical fundamentals," Prof. Siribaddana said.

This will be a benchmark for the two medicinal approaches, said Kannangara. "We are also looking in to new intergrated approaches in medicine and the western medicine is also looking in to this. So this will be a turning point in the history," Kannangara said.

If we successfully carry out for three years we can see a special system where western medicine as well as CAM that could be used effectively in community settings like Sri Lanka where such medical fundamentals are commonly practised. And then we can evaluate and assess to see how this could be used in overall healthcare system.

"So far even in the rest of the world there aren't many examples to learn how both of these worlds could be used to heal a community. The World Health Organisation is promoting and have recognised the CAM practices for the benefit of patients. So this will be a great opportunity to turn new chapter," Dr. Pilapitiya said.

"Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is a broad categorisation of systems of Medicine that do not conform to the standards and practices of Allopathic medicine (Conventional medicine) which is universally recognised as the accepted point of reference for medicine in modern science," said Dr. Pilapitiya.

"As these systems are practised in preventing or treating illness and promoting health and well-being of people, WHO has recognised these systems as a part of health care delivery to the world community and had set guidelines in using them and also in further research,"he said.

As he further said there is increased investment in herbal medicine and CAM research by public-health bodies in many countries. China, India, Nigeria, the United States of America and WHO have all made substantial research investments in traditional herbal medicines.

"Different entities may view the social value of CAM research differently. Public-health entities may be concerned with defining the risks and benefits of herbal medicines already in use, he said.

"There are programs running in other countries that are experimenting on cures to ailments using these fundamentals. But using these knowledge to raise the primary healthcare at community level is hard to find even in global context," said Dr. Suneth Angampodi of the Rajarata University.

As he further said health issues in the communities at large such as malnutrition can be well addressed by promoting the Ayurveda lifestyle.

The problem in continuing such studies is the lack of data on Complementary and Alternative medicinal practices, according to Dr. Angampodi. "We need statistics to prove the effectiveness of medical practices as it is important to present this internationally as well. In order to convince the global medical sector we need to adhere to the standards established," he said.

This will be a platform that would let the Sri Lankan healthcare sector learn how to proceed in to the new fast moving world in an innovative approach.