Govt to go ahead with ‘bridge course’ plan

Ignoring the Parliamentary panel recommendation, the Government has decided to go ahead with its plans to train the Ayurveda practitioners and staff nurses in primary care and public health competencies through the ‘bridge course’ to recruit them in Health and Wellness Centres (HWC) to come up soon across the country.

By 2019, the Union Health Ministry proposes to open 15,000 centres to be expanded to 1.5 lakh centres by 2022 in the country to meet the basic healthcare needs of the community, said a senior official from the Ministry.

The panel in its report had, recently, asked the Government to remove the ‘bridge course’, provision proposed in the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill, to allow practitioners of alternative medicines such as homoeopathy and ayurveda to practice allopathy.

However, faced with acute shortage of the MBBS doctors in the country, the Health Ministry, which is setting up the HWCs under its ambitious Ayushman Bharat Scheme is banking on these bridge-course trained Ayurveda and staff nurses  to run the centres.  They will be known as the Mid Level Healthcare Providers (MLHP), providing comprehensive primary health care (CPHC) at these centres near the community.

The official said that the representatives from the Niti Aayog, at a meeting held recently, have been clearly told that positioning MBBS in these centres was not possible, at least in the near future.

The move hinges on the premise that AYUSH and modern systems of medicine may have distinct approaches and methods of practice, but there are some areas in public health where these systems of medicine can function in mutual co-existence in an integrated manner.

In this connection, the official cited example of the successful results being noticed in its programme of co-location of AYUSH facilities at Primary Health Centres (PHCs), Community Health Centres (CHCs) and District Hospitals (DHs), to treat the NCDs like diabetes and strokes thus enabling choice to the patients  for different systems of medicines under single window. 

He argued that there were many ayurvedic drugs which have been scientifically validated by the Government departments itself. “Take the case of anti-diabetic herbal drug BGR-34 which is developed by the scientists from the country’s premier research organistion Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR),” the official added.

Supporting the Health Ministry’s move, the Finance Ministry too noted that roping in Ayurveda doctors would not only open opportunities for them but also offer a basket of choice to the people.

“The bridge course has been designed and developed by Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Some States have already rolled out the course under the National Health Mission (NHM),” the official said.