Karnataka: Helpless health department banks on Ayush to tackle dengue, chikungunya

Bengaluru: The state health department is now banking on ancient and traditional systems of medicine to tackle a host of vector borne diseases including dengue. In a meeting with officials of the the Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (Ayush) department on Wednesday, Dr Shalini Rajneesh, principal secretary , Health and Family Welfare, asked them to up their dispensation of drugs to combat diseases like dengue and chikungunya, and even diabetes and high blood pressure.

While Ayush is already dispensing drugs for vector borne diseases, it plans to now make them more widely available and give the treatment more publicity. Having received the green signal from Dr Rajneesh, the department's goal is to reach out to a maximum number of people across all districts, including the areas coming under the BBMP, through Information, Education and Communication (IEC) and make the drugs readily available at Ayush clinics.

It , in fact, plans to go all out with IEC and the drug dispensing mechanism in a week’s time.

“We are mainly working on two areas. Firstly, pre-exposure prophylaxis, meaning prevention of the vector-borne disease itself, and here we are concentrating on mosquito repellant drugs. Secondly we have drugs people can apply. For instance, if they apply neem oil it can ward off mosquitoes,” explains Dr Ananta Desai, associate professor, Ayush, adding, "Dengue is something that we cannot take lightly We are starting to identify Ayush hotspots in BBMP where these medicines will be made available in dispensaries. We will go about it in a phased manner.”

The drugs also include those that can be had along with allopathic medicines.

“There are antipyretic drugs, which can be administered to the family members of dengue patients as they could be affected as well,” he says, however admitting that the traditional system of medicine cannot help acute cases of dengue.