Ayurveda attracts global attention at the World Health Assembly

Geneva, May 25 (UNI) In its effort to popularise Ayurveda abroad, India today offered to provide technical cooperation to any country willing to evolve regulatory mechanism for teaching, practice and use of medicinal products of Indian medicine.

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss is in Geneva on a mission to propagate the science in Ayurveda and other Indian systems of medicine among 100 countries, which are participating in the ''World Health Assembly,'' organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The five-day World Health Assembly concludes tomorrow.

''We have reached a stage where we call upon our trading partners, the world over, particularly USA, European Union and other major Asian and African countries, to put in place regulatory mechanisms for regulating teaching, practice and medicines of Ayurveda and the WHO guidelines on traditional medicines,'' Dr Ramadoss said while inaugurating an ''Exposition on Indian Medicine'', organised by the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly.

Dr Ramadoss, who chaired one of the sessions at the Assembly yesterday, said he was getting enquiries from one country or the other regarding setting up of a regulatory mechanism for Ayurveda in their country. One such enquiry came from the Sultanate of Oman yesterday.

In a bid to remove the apprehension about the use of heavy metals like mercury in Ayurvedic, Sidha and Unani drugs, he said most of the drugs of these systems were plant based. However, five to ten per cent medicines utilised biological products like honey, milk, butter and other minerals and metals which had been ''in use for centuries and are perfectly safe.'' Saying that there was no basis in the ''adverse publicity'' regarding presence of heavy metails in Ayurvedic and other drugs above the permissible limits for food and medicines, Dr Ramadoss assured that heavy metals used in drugs were processed in such a way that they were de-toxified.

''Herbo-metallic therapeutic formulations are the unique contribution of Ayurveda and they have been found to be extremely beneficial for chronic conditions like arthritis,'' he said, adding that ''the government have introduced mandatory testing for heavy metals in purely herbal medicines and action has been initiated for chemical analysis and toxicity studies to scientifically validate these five to ten per cent drugs, which have heavy metals for therapeutic purpose.'' More UNI SH VJ DS1632