A group of doctors staged a demonstration against the proposal by the Central Council of Indian Medicine’s (CCIM) to integrate all systems of medicine, including AYUSH and modern medicine, also called mixopathy.
Resident Doctors’ Association (RDA) of the Government Medical College, Srinagar, and associated colleges, “strongly opposed” and held a protest on Monday against a move that allows post-graduate practitioners of Ayurveda to perform surgical procedures after a bridge course of six months.
The new order has invoked protests by doctors in several parts of the country, since notification was cleared on 22 November last year.
The doctors in Srinagar who were protesting told The Kashmir Walla that the move by the government “will encourage quackery, compromise patient health besides undermining years of hard work and learning of medical professionals”.
In a statement issued, the Association said: “At a time when the world is constantly striving for ways of modernizing medicine further , we are being pushed back and our people are deprived of the same.”
The doctors inside the premises of Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) held playcard that read: “We protest against mixing of indigenious systems”, “Say no to mixopathy, save healthcare” demanding the government to reconsider its plan.
One of the protesting doctors, Sartaj Bhat told The Kashmir Walla that the issue is the mixing of indigeneous systems “that is not only demeaning for the doctors who study it for fourteen years but also risky”.
The RDA also requested the administration to recruit more allopathic doctors in order to improve the healthcare and infrastructure.
