Amidst debates around Ayurveda and allopathy medications, the government is undertaking a door-to-door survey in Uttar Pradesh, to understand how many actually know about ayurvedic medicines and how many are taking such medications.

Sources in the know told BusinessLine that the Ministry of AYUSH has given this task to Common Service Centre (CSC), the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to start the survey in the next few days.

When asked, Dinesh Tyagi, Managing Director at CSC said, “We are starting with a pilot project with the Ministry of AYUSH in Amethi. We will start that soon. The Ministry wants to find out how many of the citizens are interested in Ayurveda medicines or how many of them are already using such medicines.”

Expanding survey

According to data on the UP government’s website, Amethi has a population of around 18.50 lakh and 1,000 villages.

“They (Ayush Ministry) wants to get a feedback from the field and ascertain that how many people are aware of Ayurvedic medicines…we expect to do the same in other parts of the country after this,” Tyagi added.

The government has been promoting Ayurveda medicines for long and recently Union Minister Jitendra Singh also said that ‘natural immunity boosters’ are more effective than pharmacological ones.

Citing studies published in medical journals over the last two decades, he said, even though vitamin and immunity booster tablets are prescribed in allopathy, the inference is that though it may be appropriate to prescribe vitamin supplements and anti-oxidant tablets or capsules to the patient, the natural source vitamins and antioxidants could be more reliable and effective.

Through SPVs like CSC, the government is also promoting selling ayurvedic medicines at various outlets across the country. CSC has around 3.70 lakh outlets across the country and has already tied up with companies like Jiva Ayurveda and local firms at State level.

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