The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Warning against ad hoc courses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 10, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Warning against ad hoc courses

Staff Reporter

Acupuncture therapists must not advertise, says expert

CHENNAI: Acupuncture therapists must not advertise their practice in the media. Nor must they lure people by advertising that they offer three-day certificate courses in the subject, said C. Indrapala, secretary-general of Medicina Alternativa, Sri Lanka.

"Ad hoc courses of three or 10 days are not conducted." Certificates in the name of a particular person who had served as a chancellor of Open International University, Colombo, were not valid, he said. "We will decertify people who sabotage our system," said Dr. Indrapala, a delegate at the three-day world congress on holistic medicine being held at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at Taramani.

Muthiah Mariappan, former Vice-Chancellor of Bharatidasan University, said in a country where more than 75 per cent of the population was in the 0-65 age group, it was important to maintain productivity in the 18-35 age group. For this, their health needs to be maintained. He called for better communication among specialists so that a person did not have to run from one specialist to another with little knowledge about the problem. He called for dissemination of information by modifying the school syllabus so that children could learn about the various systems of medicines.

T.N. Vallinayakam, former judge of Madras and Karnataka High Courts, lauded the efforts of the organisers in ensuring better reach of alternative systems through such meets.

The theme of the congress is science of ancient healing systems, said R. Ramakrishnan, a cardiologist, who is a member of the scientific committee of the congress.

The Indian holistic Medical Academy, established in 1992, runs a hospital in Thanjavur. From this year, four universities will conduct postgraduate diploma courses in acupuncture in four universities, said S. Nagendran, chairman of IHMA. He appealed to the Government to start a university for holistic medicines.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu