WHO acknowledges age old benefits of Yoga and Ayurveda

World Health Organisation has chosen Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga as its collaborating centre (CC). This CC is going to develop research guildelines for yoga studies while while Institute of PG Training and Research in Ayurveda has be chosen for research in ayurveda.

Due to this country will get a major fillip towards traditional medical system, including yoga across the world. Till date India never had a collaborating centre for WHO inspite of having a large number of Ayush institutions and 32 collaborating centres for modern medicine. Today WHO has 22 collaborating centres for traditional medicine including India.

The two CCs will the WHO body to setup policies and regulatory standards for yoga and Ayurveda. The designation status will be effective for a period of four years, from April 5, 2013.

"MDNIY has attained the privilege to be the only WHO collaborating centre in the world to engage in achieving yoga specific outcomes," Institute's director Ishwar V Basavaraddi told reporters on Friday.

He said that due to the global demand and popularity of the yoga for health care, the two institutes can offer more than just being collaborating centre like by generating information and documents of yoga for the use of all the member states of the world health body

Though India is the origin of the yoga but it the western people who practise it. Around 20 million Americans practice yoga. It is a $6 billion industry and researchers are continuing to study its benefits.

Financial Advisor , DC Katoch explained that though WHO does not have its own institutional network but identifies institutions from member countries to work in specific areas of health and designate them as WHO CCs.

"The achievement came after four years of intensive persuasion with the WHO by the Ayush Department of the Health Ministry," said Katoch.

He said that there was a clear trend of increasing demand for yoga from the public, and the Government has been actively incorporating alternative medicines besides yoga into the public healthcare system.

-by Bhaskar Raghavendran

Bhaskar is a graduate in Journalism and mass communication from Amity school of communication, Noida. Contact the author at Twitter: bhaskar_ragha

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