New Education Policy calls for Integration of Allopathy, AYUSH systems of Medicine

New Delhi: Stating that healthcare education in the country needs to be re-envisioned, the new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) that has been approved by the cabinet calls for a healthcare education system that must be integrative.

Specifying on the word "integrative", the vision document that was recently released by the HRD ministry states that all students of allopathic medical education must have a basic understanding of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH), and vice versa. The document besides this, stresses on greater knowledge and skills on primary as well as preventive healthcare for students. The document states

Healthcare education needs to be re-envisioned so that the duration, structure, and design of the educational programmes need to match the role requirements that graduates will play. Students will be assessed at regular intervals on well-defined parameters primarily required for working in primary care and in secondary hospitals. Given that people exercise pluralistic choices in healthcare, our healthcare education system must be integrative meaning thereby that all students of allopathic medical education must have a basic understanding of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH), and vice versa. There shall also be a much greater emphasis on preventive healthcare and community medicine in all forms of healthcare education.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi yesterday approved the National Education Policy 2020. The new policy aims to pave way for transformational reforms in school and higher education systems in the country. This policy will replace the 34 your old National Policy on Education (NPE),1986. The draft of the said policy was released in 2019, when it was put in the public domain to seek feedback from various stakeholders and over two lakh suggestions were received by the HRD Ministry about the same.

The new policy also envisaged that the Centre and the States will work together to increase the public investment in Education sector to reach 6 per cent of the GDP at the earliest and universalization of education from pre-school to secondary level with 100 per cent Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in school education by 2030.

The Cabinet also approved renaming the Human Resources Development(HRD) Ministry back as Education Ministry.