Ayurvedic Centers will soon be Standardized

March 27, 2007

(Ayushveda.com) - After the directive of making Ayurvedic product manufacturers submit details on their inventories of raw materials, there is more good news for Ayurveda proponents in store. The National Accreditation Board of Hospitals in India has planned to standardize all the Ayurvedic Centers operating in the country, in order to create a uniform set of procedure all over the country.

The Indian authorities have only recently awoken to the immense potential Ayurveda has in the world market. Ayurveda was hitherto branded as an alternative form of medicine and was used with a sense of quaintness. But, with medical confirmatory reports on the benefits of the thousands of herbs Ayurveda uses pouring in from all corners of the world, the Indian government has taken it upon itself to bring this ancient science out into the open.

Ayurvedic centers have been existing and operating in the country since ages, especially in the idyllic South Indian state of Kerala, but they were operating without a uniform set of rules. For this reason, there was a vast difference between the procedures adopted in any two of these centers. In order to circumvent this situation, the NABH has planned to make the centers uniform in their operative methods.

The very first thing on the agenda will be to distinguish the Ayurvedic centers from the mainstream hospitals. This will be done by employing a different set of criteria for the working of the Ayurvedic centers. A technical committee will be set up for the purpose of setting up standards for the main Ayurveda players.

Quite unsurprisingly, the demand for such a standardization of Ayurvedic centers has come from Kerala, the state which has the highest number of Ayurvedic centers in the world. Kerala has been long trying to garner foreign revenue by attracting people from all over the world to their spas and resorts. About 95% of the clientele of Kerala’s Ayurvedic spas and resorts are Americans and Europeans.

The NABH plans have been proposed by Y. P. Bhatia, the Chairman of the Accreditation Committee and V. K. Singh, the Rear Admiral of the Committee.

Ayurvedic Centers are not the only targets of this plan in process by the NABH. There are going to be changes in the way mainstream hospitals work too. Hospitals will be accredited this year. About 50 hospitals are on the NABH agenda for accreditation. Accredited hospitals will get improved facilities such as more beds, ambulances, nursing homes, blood banks, etc.

All in all, the NABH proposal is to improve the overall medical scenario in the country. Its good news for the practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine, since standardization will mean that their qualifications will work all over the country, without regional variations, as is the case in the existing circumstances.