Ayush in Public Health- Traditional Healthcare System and A Handbook Research and Training (Set of 2 Volumes)

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Prof. R. K. Mutatkar, a student of Prof. S.C. Dube and a colleague of Prof. Irawati Karve was the first Head of the Department of Anthropology and the first Director of the School of Health Sciences, University of Pune. He pioneered teaching of Medical Anthropology in India in 1974. He initiated social science research on Leprosy at WHO, Geneva in 1981. He chaired the curriculum development committee for Anthropology at the UGC to prepare a model syllabus in 2001. He was Chairman of the first working group of AYUSH in Public Health at the Steering Committee on AYUSH for the Eleventh Five Year Plan. He has been Chairman of the Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists (INCAA). He established an academic NGO, The Maharashtra Association of Anthropological Sciences, (MAAS) in 1976 at Pune.

Currently he is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Social-Behavioural Research Division of the ICMR. Society for Indian Medical Anthropology (SIMA) organized a conference in his honour at Mysore in 2007 and dedicated two volumes "Explorations in Indian Medical Anthropology" to him, published by Concept Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd.

Prof. Mutatkar was honoured with International Gandhi Award for Leprosy, on 30th January, 2016, which is World Leprosy Day and Martyr's Day in India, by Hon. Vice President of India, Shri Hamid Ansari, at New Delhi.

This book on AYUSH in Public Health as presented in two Volumes originates in the understanding of Anthropology in Medicine as a topic under the curriculum of Applied Anthropology at the Masters programme in Anthropology at Sagar University.

The Voyages of travellers like Christopher Columbus Vasco de Gama Marco Polo and others first documented the physical and cultural habits of the people. With the classical field work tradition of Anthropology among the people on islands, or isolated in the forests, valleys and hills, usually referred to as primitives; documentation of queer customs triggered interpretation about the evolution and diffusion of human institutions It Man was biologically evolved, so would be the institutions of Man Functionalist theories developed from the observations about Man. Man, Man Environment and Man Supernatural relationships attitudes practices developed such sub-disciplines like Ethno medicine Ethno botany or Ethno biology Medical Anthropology encompasses all of these indigenous knowledge systems and the implications of modern bio-medicine about health and disease patterns.

In the old world civilizations, more particularly the Asian civilizations, great textual traditions like Ayurveda Yoga Chinese Unani were developed by the reflective urban elite intellectuals by studying the clinical evidence of their own experiences and of the indigenous healers about the traditional healing practices.

Due to invasions and colonial rule, different systems of medicine proliferated in India the textual great traditions in heating were available in the referral urban centres however the lay people in villages continued and still continue with their Indigenous healing practices for common ailments. Anthropologists prefer to document these as ethno-medicine which do not reach the health bureaucracies, who make policies about health care and implement them. The success of modern biomedicine in controlling epidemics of communicable diseases has oriented the public sector health care to allopathic system. Ayurveda or Unani colleges were established in the princely States of India, not so much in the directly ruled British Presidencies.

The planning process in pre-Independent India about the vision of health care, ideas about Naturopathy by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, have culminated in the establishment of National ISM&H policy. Parallel systems of health care in some states have now reached the end point of establishment of AYUSH Ministry at Delhi in November 2014.

However, the dynamics of interaction between the Public Sector, Private Sector and People's Sector is not yet being interpreted through research documentation. While the modern pharmaceutical drugs developed through the 'scientific process' of animal trials and clinical trials, they are withdrawn from the market after few years or get banned. The allegations about the efficacy of traditional drugs used by people since long are mounted again and again, due to lack of documentation and epidemiological research.

**Contents and Sample Pages**