World Ayurveda Congress: WHO Mulling To Set Up Regulatory Platform For Ayurveda Practitioners

There are nearly 500,000 registered practitioners of Ayurveda globally. Setting up a regulatory platform will help accelerate the global acceptance and accessibility of Ayurveda.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is coming out with new initiatives to promote Ayurveda and accelerate its acceptance and accessibility worldwide. The UN body is planning to establish a multi-country regulatory cooperation platform for traditional medicine practitioners within a period of 10 to 15 years of time.

Dr Geetha Krishnan, Technical Officer, Traditional Medicine, WHO, Geneva, made this announcement on while speaking at a session on 'Expanding Scope of Ayurveda' at the 9th edition of the World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) & Arogya Expo 2022 that began at Campal Grounds, Panaji, on Thursday.

"Prevention, early detection and rehabilitation to improve healthy life expectancy are among our priorities in future. Based on these, we have to understand how to utilise the nearly 500,000 registered practitioners of Ayurveda globally, to achieve these goals," he said.

Dr Krishnan also highlighted a few other initiatives taken up by WHO to promote Ayurveda such as training modules for Ayurveda, benchmarks for regulating its practices and a standardised terminology document.

Further, he informed that the WHO's Global Centre Of Traditional Medicine (GCTM) will be working with several governments to bring out more evidence-based Ayurveda, to the globe, and it is half-way through in the work to include Ayurveda in the international classification of diseases.

The Global Centre for Traditional Medicine is being established at Jamnagar in Gujarat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the Centre in April this year in the presence of WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, and Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Kumar Jugnauth.

Global status of Ayurveda

According to Dr Krishnan, the WHO believes that Ayurveda can play a big role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

He noted that Ayurveda is a cost-effective healthcare system, and its concepts can be totally utilised for achieving the SDGs when considered under the perspective of products, practices and practitioners.

Regarding the global status of Ayurveda, Dr Krishnan said that its global market is estimated at $30 billion in 2022. About 93 WHO member states acknowledge the use of Ayurveda in their society, 16 member states regulate Ayurveda practice, and five member states support insurance coverage for Ayurveda, he added.

Dr Krishnan also noted "The scope of Ayurveda lies in the domains of psychological, physical, spiritual, and social dimensions of life."

Speaking at the session, Prof Bhushan Patwardhan, National Research Professor-AYUSH and Former Vice Chairman, UGC, stated that Ayurveda should be looked upon as a source of innovation.

It is time to merge Ayurveda and modern science effectively, opined Dr Bala Pesala, of IIT Jodhpur, who also attend the session.