Exempt us from registration: Traditional medicine practitioners

Coimbatore: Traditional medical practitioners staged a protest in front of south taluk office on Wednesday demanding the state government to provide exemption from the clinical establishment registration.
The government had, in March, mandated that all clinical establishments, including hospitals, nursing homes, dispensaries, consulting rooms, clinics and polyclinics, should register under the Tamil Nadu private clinicale Establishment (regulation), bill 1997. While existing establishments had to be registered within nine months, new establishments were told to register within six months.

“We had learnt medical treatment from our ancestors. Our knowledge is centuries-old. We can treat over 4,000 diseases,” said P Deivasigamani, general secretary of the Integrated Traditional Practitioners Association. “There are over 1.5lakh such practitioners across Tamil Nadu. The state government had last issued certificates to us in 1977. Without a certificate, we won’t be able to register our establishments,” he said.

“We can treat most of the fevers, which are given treatment for months, within days using traditional medicines,” Deivasigamani said. The practitioners also sought a separate medical council to develop the field. TNN