A socio-ecological critique on India's local health traditions amidst rising incidence of global pandemics

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 crisis has exposed inadequacy to deal with such health emergencies. The state of healthcare facilities in India is shambolic, which is further exacerbated by the exclusivity of modern health systems. The authors argue for vertical and horizontal expansion of the existing system to include traditional medicine systems, in favor of an urgently needed holistic and more inclusive healthcare system.

Methods: Secondary data were collected from free online resources, including preprints, reprints and databases, J-gate Plus, PubMed and Web of Science, using keywords such as, "folk medicine", "folk medicine AND India", "traditional Indian medicines", "indigenous Indian medicines AND India", "Indian ethnomedicines", "Indian AND folk AND medicine", "indigenous Indian medicine".

Results and conclusions: Insufficiently robust public healthcare infrastructure, lack of enough qualified health professionals, and poor use of its traditional medicinal systems, are limiting the access of basic healthcare facilities to a large section of the Indian population. Despite vehement opposition and criticism from modern health system practitioners, indigenous and local healing traditions do offer benefits and share a common global goal of health and healing. The objectives of Universal Health Coverage and Health for All as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be achieved without their involvement, especially in remote and economically disadvantaged regions of the country. Even a sub-optimal utilization of its biological and human resources and related traditional knowledge can not only profoundly change the health, but also the economic landscape of India. Here, we have nuanced the constrains posed by the emerging health challenges, status and prospects of the great and little traditions of the Indian System of Medicines in fulfilling the urgent healthcare needs of the country. The authors based their arguments on the available evidence, rather than emotive ideas or, as a fan of Indian traditional medicines, and suggest for the purposeful inclusion of traditional health systems and practitioners more actively in India's health care delivery systems. The country must not squander the opportunities offered by its traditional medicinal systems.

Keywords: Bioprospection; Capacity building; Ethnomedicine; Floristic diversity, ISM; LHTs; Traditional pharmacological knowledge.

Fig. 1

Available health infrastructure in the country – number of hospitals (A), number of beds (B), number of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) hospitals and dispensaries (C) and number of health professionals (D).

Fig. 2

Majority of drugs in Indian System of Medicines (ISMs) and Local Health Traditions (LHTs) are symptomatic in nature (not disease specific). They are better suited to act as rehabilitative and cover a broad range of therapeutic drugs, unlike allopathic drugs, which are target specific. So, even in case of pathogenic infection they facilitate healing via an immune-boosting response of the patient.

Fig. 3

Photographs showing (A) a traditional Indian healer at Amarkantak town; (B) Rastriya Guni Mission, Udaipur (courtesy of their Facebook mission page); (C) Children of Jana village in Jharkhand with medicinal plants (courtesy of Dibyendu Chaudhary, Parijat Gosh, Temba Oraon, Vivek Sinha – downtoearth.org.in) (D) Amarkantak Arka Eye Drop extracted from the flowers of Gulbakawali Hedychium coronarium, to treat cataracts.