Addressing the Global Conference on Integrated Healthcare and Communication, in which experts from different countries participated, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said, COVID 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.
Notable among others who spoke during the webinar included Professor Elissa Epel from University of California, Dr Peter Wayne from Harvard, Dr Susan Bauer Wu from Latin America, Professor Vikram Patel from Harvard and others.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, during the COVID pandemic, several Allopathic Medical professionals who were hitherto sceptic 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, he said, 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
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. However, he said, there was a certain amount of scepticism in certain quarters, which has been done away with in the face of the COVID challenge.
India, said Dr Jitendra 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,
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that ever since Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister of India, he has brought to the centre stage the virtues of indigenous system of medical management. 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 has again Prime Minister Modi, he said, who created a separate Ministry of AYUSH, considering the importance of indigenous medical management system.
