37 cantonment hospitals to start Ayurveda Clinics soon, says Defence Ministry

New Delhi: A total of 37 cantonment hospitals across the country will start Ayurveda clinics from May 1 onwards to provide more people with the benefits of Indian traditional medicines, the Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

"The move will make available well-established and tice-tested therapies of Ayurveda to the residents of cantonments, including armed forces personnel, their families and civilians availing health services from these hospitals," the ministry's statement noted.

The decision to start the aforementioned clinics was taken at a recent high-level meeting held between Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar and Secretary Ministry of AYUSH Vaidya Rakesh Kotecha, it said.

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To support this initiative, the Ministry of AYUSH is providing skilled AYUSH doctors and pharmacists to the 37 cantonment hospitals, it said.

"Officials of Directorate General of Defence Estates (DGDE), Ministry of Defence and Ministry of AYUSH would work in close collaboration to make these 37 Ayurveda Centres functional," it stated.

These 37 cantonment hospitals are based in cities such as Agra, Allahabad, Bareilly, Dehradun, Mhow, Pachmarhi, Shahjahanpur, Jabalpur, and Badami Bagh and Barrackpore. – PTI report published by The Print.

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The Medical Dialogues Team had earlier reported that the Ayush Ministry has initiated the world's first multicentre phase-3 clinical trial to examine the efficacy of Ayurveda in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, according to an official statement.

The clinical trial will be conducted following the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use Good Clinical Practice guidelines, it stated.

It will be closely monitored by Dr. Daniel Erick Furst, a renowned rheumatologist at the University of California, the statement mentioned. This project is one of the first multi-centre phase-3 double-blind double-dummy clinical trials on the efficacy of Ayurveda in the management of rheumatoid arthritis, it claimed.

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