Can Homeopaths Help Close India’s Healthcare Gap?
By Arunima Rajan
If Maharashtra’s bridge course experiment survives its current freeze, it could redefine how India tackles its chronic shortage of doctors- not by producing more MBBS doctors but by blurring the boundaries of medicine itself.
Ever since June 30, when the government issued an order allowing homeopaths who have completed a bridge course in pharmacology (CCMP) to register with the Maharashtra Medical Council, there have been widespread protests within the medical community.
“After the widespread protest by resident and practising doctors across Maharashtra, the State Government has currently put the implementation of the order on hold. The issue is being reviewed following representations made by medical associations including MARD, IMA, FAIMA and MAGMO. However, there is still no formal revocation notification, and that uncertainty itself has created deep anxiety among medical professionals,” says Dr. Suyash Dhavane, General Secretary, Central Maharashtra State Association of Resident Doctors.
Maharashtra Homeopathic Practitioners Act
“The 2014 amendment to the Maharashtra Homeopathic Practitioners Act and Maharashtra Medical Council Act which allowed homeopaths to take a brief pharmacology course—has always been legally and scientifically contested. It was challenged by doctors’ associations and remains pending in court with no final judgment. Reviving or extending that framework now, without judicial closure, amounts to administrative overreach,” says the doctor
He also adds that when they met Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif, he clearly stated that the sanctity of modern medicine must be maintained, and its level should not be degraded by small bridge courses.
“We sincerely acknowledge his clarity and commitment, and we are confident that he will continue to stand with the medical fraternity in preventing any dilution of modern medicine. The solution lies not in allowing cross-pathy, but in strengthening the public health system—filling vacancies of MBBS doctors, improving rural postings, and incentivising service in underserved areas. The government must engage with professional bodies to create sustainable, ethical, and patient-centric reforms instead of blurring the boundaries between medical systems,” adds Dhavane.
Integrative Medicine is the Way Forward?
Dr. Zankhana M Buch, Cheif Medical Officer, Apollo AyurVAID hospitals, has a different take on this topic. “Integrative Medicine is the way forward- a structured collaboration between one or more medical systems to address disease at a whole-person level. Allopathy excels in acute management of health determinants such as infection, trauma, or anatomical-physiological changes. Ayurveda places the patient at the centre, addressing intrinsic factors like inflammation, immune response, and metabolism dysregulation; it aims to restore a virtuous cycle of healing through a multi-pronged approach of personalised diet, lifestyle, counselling, medicine, and panchakarma. With the rise of multi-morbidity,
complex syndromes involving body and mind, a seamless, integrative model of care offers a pathway to affordable, accessible, safe and efficacious medical care for India and the world,” she adds.
But what looks like a solution to policy makers feels like peril to many doctors.
Harsh criticism from IMA
“Modern medicine and homeopathy are different streams of human thought. In fact, Hahnemann called us ‘allopaths’ (‘alien to the body’). For example, vaccines are alien even at the concept level, and homeopathy doesn’t accept vaccines. It will be interesting to see how they reconcile these contradictions. Modern surgery is an inherent component of modern medicine. Homeopathy is anathema to surgery, which it called vivisection. Whether a patient wants to seek care from modern medicine or homeopathy is her wish and privilege. We deprive this choice through crosspathy (one system prescribing another). It is not a question of prescription information; it is a question of two alien ways of thinking in medicine. Well, we don’t know what Frankenstein will come out of this.
In a country where children die due to contaminated cough syrup and the prescribing doctor gets arrested instead of the approving drug controller, I don’t think there is enough sanity to understand the concerns expressed by us,” said Dr R V Ashokan, former president of the Indian Medical Association.
Nurses, Ayurveda Physicians Better Candidates
Dr AB Dey, Professor, AIIMS, New Delhi, seconds his views. They are fundamentally different systems of healthcare. He continues: “For example, both the systems have different core principles, basis/evidence base and focus for diagnosis and treatment, and principles of drug dosage. In this situation the bridge course is of little consequence and the physician of such a scheme will have to unlearn the basic homeopathy training and learn modern medicine over a period of two years or whatever period decided in the scheme. To address the dearth of health care in rural or remote areas nursing graduates with similar training or Ayurvedic physicians with education in similar science are better candidates.”
“We need to revisit the Licentiate Medical Practitioner (LMP) curriculum prevalent in 1930s and 40s to prepare a bridge course,” adds the former dean of research at AIIMS New Delhi.
He points out that he will be very concerned about management of older patients with multi-morbidity by such non-physician prescribers. “Current modern medicine
physicians without exposure to Geriatrics during their UG training also cause serious errors in management of the very old in their 80s and 90s (the fastest increasing segment of the population),” explains the former Head of the Department of Geriatric Medicine at AIIMS.
He continues: “Theoretically speaking protocols for 10 or 20 common conditions alone or in combinations can be developed for this group of physicians. However, the uncertainties of medicine do not allow such a simple scenario of practice of medicine. The challenges of shortage of health care workers need to be addressed with the perspective of the health care worker along with policy maker and users. At the end of the day shorter difficult postings, better compensation and incentives for career progression may help to some extent,” he explains.
For a two-year pilot, what sample size, site mix (rural/peri-urban), supervision ratios, and clear stop-rules would he specify to generate credible safety and effectiveness data before any scale-up?
“Community and Family Medicine departments of few AIIMS and other Central Government institutions may be entrusted with the task of training 6 to 8 candidates in a qualitative research mode for a two-year period encompassing all aspects of primary health care in limited resource setting. The results must be accepted even if these are negative,” he concludes.
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