By IANS,
Lucknow : Announced by the central government with much fanfare nearly two years ago, a scheme to promote and provide homeopathic medicines to pregnant women and new-borns is yet to bear fruit in Uttar Pradesh.
The state government claimed this is because the central government was yet to release the funds for it. “We have made several efforts to get the allotted funds from the central government but all in vain,” B.N. Singh, the state’s director, homeopathic medicines, told IANS.
“Due to the estranged relations between the state and the central government, the scheme could not be worked out as the central government is still to release funds for the scheme,” a senior health directorate official claimed, preferring anonymity to avoid any controversy.
The state government decided to implement the central government’s National Campaign on Homeopathy for Mother and Child Care (NCHMCC) last year after citing its success in Gujarat.
The scheme was launched in November 2007 by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss in the national capital and subsequently in the state in February 2008. While launching the scheme, Ramadoss had stressed that there was a good homeopathy infrastructure in the country.
“There are 185 homeopathic colleges in the country and 33 of them offer postgraduate courses. There are around 217,000 registered homeopathic practitioners,” the health minister had said.
“It is necessary that the practitioners in particular be brought into this national campaign so that the message that there is effective and affordable homeopathic treatment can be effectively communicated,” Ramadoss had then said.
“We decided to launch NCHMCC (in Uttar Pradesh) after it showed good results in Gujarat,” Singh said.
It was proved that if homeopathic medicines were administered timely to pregnant women it helped reduce complications at the time of delivery and also resulted in birth of healthy babies, he added.
Intensive training programmes for officials and doctors of the homeopathic department were carried out and it was also decided that doctors from the allopathic and ayurvedic streams, along with the health workers of all government hospitals, will also be imparted similar training.
The trained doctors were to be provided with a kit of homeopathic medicines that were to be administered to pregnant women and newborns via extensive campaigns similar to the pulse polio drive.
However, things came to a standstill within a month and the state government has till now failed to launch even a single campaign.