CONFERENCE REPORT GLOBAL AYURVEDA FESTIVAL, KOCHI Following the start of the series in Trivandrum in 2012, the Second Global Ayurveda Festival with the Theme, “Ayurveda in Public Health,” was held in Cochin from 21st to 25th of February, 2014. It proved a great success due to the support of the State Government of Kerala, the Center for Science and Social Action under Dr. GG. Gangadharan, and other official sponsors, including a broad arm of commercial sponsorship. The Exhibition and Arogya Expo of Ayurveda products was well supported and attended, particularly by local Ayurveda product companies from Kerala, which is now recognized as India’s primary center for traditional Ayurveda practice and teaching. The Ayurveda Education Expo was attended by thousands of Ayurveda students who had come to the festival. The State of Kerala is the main national destination for Ayurveda Health Tourism, which is an ever‑increasing source of valuable foreign exchange earnings. Over 350 foreign guests from 35 countries around the world, including all eight South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries, were also in attendance. The Festival was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Sri Oommen Chandy, Chief Minister of Kerala, who spoke movingly of his Government’s staunch support for Ayurveda, and its local Kerala tradition of Ayurveda, since the founding of the 18 Ashthavaidya families over 1800 years ago. Ayurveda provides a worthy home for this great tradition, and its practices have long been responsible for the high levels of public health enjoyed by its peoples. Only now, as the ancient traditions are being eroded by failure to recognize their continuing value to family health, and by their misunderstanding in light of modern science, are serious health problems due to natural causes such as seasonal climate changes beginning to manifest more widely. Public Health in Kerala is still in need of Ayurveda, and its principles need to be widely disseminated in educational institutions throughout the state. The guest of honor, His Excellency Rajkeswar Purryag, The President of Mauritius, recounted how his island’s Indian population introduced Ayurveda, and still rely on it; also, how he has personally benefitted from regular Access this article online Quick Response Code:
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treatments at top Panchakarma clinics in the State of Kerala, where the Chief Minister has been his great support. He said that it was a privilege to be able to promote a system of such great power, particularly when its principles and practices are so necessary to counter the huge increase in noncommunicable diseases, which modern biomedicine has proved incapable of either preventing or curing. He emphasized his commitment to Ayurveda as a means of promoting Public Health today. Other dignitaries attending the Inauguration included The honorable V.K. Bunwaree, Minister of Education for Mauritius, Ministers of Health from Sri Lanka and the State of Kerala, Mr. Tony Chammany, the Hon. Mayor of Cochin, Dr. Jayasir Mendis, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health of Sri Lanka, and top civil servants responsible for Ayurveda policies etc., from those and other regions of South Asia. The GAF was preceded by workshops on professional practices like Panchakarma therapy, and on scientific abilities like scientific paper writing. In this spirit, a professional meeting was held of the group setting out standards for clinical trials in Ayurveda, Consortia, which is in consultation with the main Cochrane group in India, of whom Dr. Prathap Tharyan of Christian Medical College, Vellore, attended the meeting. Dr. Prathap expressed his support for the initiative, saying how pleased he had been to attend the first meeting in 2010, and how important it is that Ayurveda is seen to be participating in global level research activities at the top level of accepted quality, and that that is made transparently available to Ayurveda researchers. The Panchakarma therapy workshop focused particularly on treatments specific to Kerala Ayurveda like the Pinda Swedana using the locally grown varieties of red rice in the bolus used to massage the patient. The scientific paper writing workshop, organized by Dr. Vivek Shankar, used members of the profession most experienced in giving such workshops. It was a particular pleasure to welcome back UCLA’s Professor Edwin Cooper, who started these workshops at the World Ayurveda Congress in Pune 2006 at the request of Professor Bhushan Patwardhan. It covered all aspects of writing articles and reviews on Ayurveda: kinds of article, criteria for publishability, ethics, selection of journals, problem journals and Beall’s list, creative writing and plagiarism, approaches to different sections, especially structured sections, conflicts of interest, acknowledgements, referencing and reference styles.
Journal of Ayurveda & Integrative Medicine | July-September 2014 | Vol 5 | Issue 3
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Hankey: GAF Kochi report
Many top Ayurveda professionals and associates from around the world attended the meeting including leaders of Ayurveda medical schools in Europe, Mark Rosenberg and Antonio Morandi, and leaders of Ayurveda from North America and Australia. Distinguished people from Ayurveda’s past chaired Plenary Sessions, such as former Secretary of the Department of AYUSH, Srimati Shailaja Chandra, whose continuing commitments to Ayurveda include being Chairperson of the Organizing Committee for the World Ayurveda Congress being held in Delhi in early November. Keynote Speakers included Professor Gerard Bodeker of Columbia University Medical School in New York, who also teaches courses in Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Oxford University Medical School in the UK, Dr Abhimanyu Kumar, Director‑General of the Central Council for Research on Ayurveda and Siddha, and Director of the new All India Institute of Ayurveda opening to students this autumn in Delhi, and Professor M.S. Baghel, Ex‑Vice‑Chancellor of Gujarat Ayurveda University, the nation’s foremost Ayurveda Teaching and Research Institution, where he is currently Director of the IGPT and RA Post Graduate College. Professor Bodeker, who holds a PhD in Public Health from Har vard, was particularly eloquent on Ayur veda’s ability to improve the cur rently disastrous public health trends in India. These are principally attributable to biomedicine’s failure to prevent increases in noncommunicable diseases, especially in the urban population, and to Ayurveda’s reticence to make its very real contributions known and understood at the national policy‑making level. Professor Bodeker emphasized how the Ayurveda texts state that local problems have local solutions, giving examples from malaria, heart‑disease, diabetes
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and anemia; many plants from non‑codified traditions have now been identified against malaria, and must be used as soon as artemisinin resistant genes in Plasmodium make the entirely irresponsible introduction of the single component artemisinin extracted from Artemisia render all Artemisia based treatments worthless; in heart‑disease, the American Medical Association now recognizes that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation technique is highly effective against hypertension and has authorized US physicians to prescribe it – it can reduce cardiovascular disease hospital costs by 85%, and similarly reduce fatalities; for diabetes, changes must be made to diet – eliminate polished rice and white sugar by returning to traditional unpolished varieties of rice, such as red and brown rice, and substituting jaggary varieties for sugar; for anemia use the many natural products in India rich in available iron, especially drum‑stick and jaggary. Dr. Bodeker also emphasized the importance of obtaining WHO Guidelines for Ayurveda and hence that member states can draw on them when official requests to introduce Ayurveda into their available medical systems are made. For this to happen, he said, India must be willing to initiate the process by offering to contribute to the costs of formulating the guidelines. Only then can the health advantages of Ayurveda become available globally. Alex Hankey Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S‑VYASA), Vivekananda Road, Kalluballu Post, Jigani, Anekal, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India - 560 105 E‑mail: [email protected] How to cite this article: Hankey A. Global Ayurveda Festival, Kochi. J Ayurveda Integr Med 2014;5:197-8. Source of Support: Nill, Conflict of Interest: None declared.
Journal of Ayurveda & Integrative Medicine | July-September 2014 | Vol 5 | Issue 3
Website: www.jaim.in
treatments at top Panchakarma clinics in the State of Kerala, where the Chief Minister has been his great support. He said that it was a privilege to be able to promote a system of such great power, particularly when its principles and practices are so necessary to counter the huge increase in noncommunicable diseases, which modern biomedicine has proved incapable of either preventing or curing. He emphasized his commitment to Ayurveda as a means of promoting Public Health today. Other dignitaries attending the Inauguration included The honorable V.K. Bunwaree, Minister of Education for Mauritius, Ministers of Health from Sri Lanka and the State of Kerala, Mr. Tony Chammany, the Hon. Mayor of Cochin, Dr. Jayasir Mendis, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health of Sri Lanka, and top civil servants responsible for Ayurveda policies etc., from those and other regions of South Asia. The GAF was preceded by workshops on professional practices like Panchakarma therapy, and on scientific abilities like scientific paper writing. In this spirit, a professional meeting was held of the group setting out standards for clinical trials in Ayurveda, Consortia, which is in consultation with the main Cochrane group in India, of whom Dr. Prathap Tharyan of Christian Medical College, Vellore, attended the meeting. Dr. Prathap expressed his support for the initiative, saying how pleased he had been to attend the first meeting in 2010, and how important it is that Ayurveda is seen to be participating in global level research activities at the top level of accepted quality, and that that is made transparently available to Ayurveda researchers. The Panchakarma therapy workshop focused particularly on treatments specific to Kerala Ayurveda like the Pinda Swedana using the locally grown varieties of red rice in the bolus used to massage the patient. The scientific paper writing workshop, organized by Dr. Vivek Shankar, used members of the profession most experienced in giving such workshops. It was a particular pleasure to welcome back UCLA’s Professor Edwin Cooper, who started these workshops at the World Ayurveda Congress in Pune 2006 at the request of Professor Bhushan Patwardhan. It covered all aspects of writing articles and reviews on Ayurveda: kinds of article, criteria for publishability, ethics, selection of journals, problem journals and Beall’s list, creative writing and plagiarism, approaches to different sections, especially structured sections, conflicts of interest, acknowledgements, referencing and reference styles.
Journal of Ayurveda & Integrative Medicine | July-September 2014 | Vol 5 | Issue 3
197
Hankey: GAF Kochi report
Many top Ayurveda professionals and associates from around the world attended the meeting including leaders of Ayurveda medical schools in Europe, Mark Rosenberg and Antonio Morandi, and leaders of Ayurveda from North America and Australia. Distinguished people from Ayurveda’s past chaired Plenary Sessions, such as former Secretary of the Department of AYUSH, Srimati Shailaja Chandra, whose continuing commitments to Ayurveda include being Chairperson of the Organizing Committee for the World Ayurveda Congress being held in Delhi in early November. Keynote Speakers included Professor Gerard Bodeker of Columbia University Medical School in New York, who also teaches courses in Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Oxford University Medical School in the UK, Dr Abhimanyu Kumar, Director‑General of the Central Council for Research on Ayurveda and Siddha, and Director of the new All India Institute of Ayurveda opening to students this autumn in Delhi, and Professor M.S. Baghel, Ex‑Vice‑Chancellor of Gujarat Ayurveda University, the nation’s foremost Ayurveda Teaching and Research Institution, where he is currently Director of the IGPT and RA Post Graduate College. Professor Bodeker, who holds a PhD in Public Health from Har vard, was particularly eloquent on Ayur veda’s ability to improve the cur rently disastrous public health trends in India. These are principally attributable to biomedicine’s failure to prevent increases in noncommunicable diseases, especially in the urban population, and to Ayurveda’s reticence to make its very real contributions known and understood at the national policy‑making level. Professor Bodeker emphasized how the Ayurveda texts state that local problems have local solutions, giving examples from malaria, heart‑disease, diabetes
198
and anemia; many plants from non‑codified traditions have now been identified against malaria, and must be used as soon as artemisinin resistant genes in Plasmodium make the entirely irresponsible introduction of the single component artemisinin extracted from Artemisia render all Artemisia based treatments worthless; in heart‑disease, the American Medical Association now recognizes that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation technique is highly effective against hypertension and has authorized US physicians to prescribe it – it can reduce cardiovascular disease hospital costs by 85%, and similarly reduce fatalities; for diabetes, changes must be made to diet – eliminate polished rice and white sugar by returning to traditional unpolished varieties of rice, such as red and brown rice, and substituting jaggary varieties for sugar; for anemia use the many natural products in India rich in available iron, especially drum‑stick and jaggary. Dr. Bodeker also emphasized the importance of obtaining WHO Guidelines for Ayurveda and hence that member states can draw on them when official requests to introduce Ayurveda into their available medical systems are made. For this to happen, he said, India must be willing to initiate the process by offering to contribute to the costs of formulating the guidelines. Only then can the health advantages of Ayurveda become available globally. Alex Hankey Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S‑VYASA), Vivekananda Road, Kalluballu Post, Jigani, Anekal, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India - 560 105 E‑mail: [email protected] How to cite this article: Hankey A. Global Ayurveda Festival, Kochi. J Ayurveda Integr Med 2014;5:197-8. Source of Support: Nill, Conflict of Interest: None declared.
Journal of Ayurveda & Integrative Medicine | July-September 2014 | Vol 5 | Issue 3
