HEALTH PERCEPTIONS AND PLURAL SYSTEMS

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Health perceptions play an important part in ensuring sound health outcomes. To a large extent they are culturally determined but also subject to change with economic growth and social development. People intuitively develop capacity to make choices tor being treated under the western of indigenous systems of medicines, keep a balance between good habits traditionally developed for healthy living and modem lifestyles, decide on where to go for chrome and acute care and how to apportion intra-family utilization ofhealthcare resources. The professional is generally bound by his discipline and its inherent logic of causation and effect and tends to discount even what work as successful practice, I fit does not fall within the accepted understanding of his profession. Some movement is occurring among eminent allopathic doctors trying, for instance, to rework Ayurveda theory in a modem idiom starting from respectful reverse analysis for actual successful contemporary practice of Ayurveda and provide a theoretical frame linking it to contemporary needs. There is evidence from public health campaigns in Tamil Nadu where every seventh person spontaneously expressed a preference for Sidda Medicine. Homeopathy for chronic ailment is widely accepted. The herbal base for Ayurvda medicine widely practiced in the Himalayan belt has down world attention a huge export market remains to be tapped according to the knowledgeable trade sources but the danger of bio-privacy remains and legal enablements should be put in place soon that would fully expand on our rights under the WTO agreements. The draft national policy on ISIvIH has attempted to place these plural systems in a modem service delivery and research and education context, it has covered its natural resource base, traditional knowledge base and development of institutions to carry a national heritage forward. There is hope for the survival and growth of the sector only if it becomes an example of convergence between people's and planner's perceptions and ensure its relevance, accountability and affordability to contemporary illnesses and conditions. At the same time it is undeniable that there is much cross practice by ISM practitioners which usually include prescriptions we western medicine as part of indigenous treatment Appropriate regulation is needed to protect people from fraud and other dangers but the larger question is how to make the perceptions of the professionals and planners regarding indigenous system of medicine less ambivalent.  The separate department for ISM&H should be able to bring about functional integration of ISM and western medicine in service delivery at PHC levels by 2005 whereby it will usher in an uniquely Indian system of care.