Ayurveda and medicalisation today: The loss of important knowledge and practice in health?

Ayurveda translates as ‘life science’. Its knowledge is not limited to medicine, cure or therapy and is forlaypersons, households, communities, as well as for physicians. Throughout its evolutionary history,Ayurveda and Local Health Traditions have reciprocally influenced each other. In modern times, theinfluence of biomedicine on Ayurveda is leading to its medicalisation. Over the past century, theintroduction and perspective of biomedicine into India has made the human being an object for positiveknowledge, a being who can be understood with scientific reason and can be governed and controlledthrough medical knowledge. This paper explores how this shift towards medicalisation is affecting theknowledge, teaching, and practice of Ayurveda. It examines the impact and contribution of processes likestandardisation, professionalisation, bio-medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation on Ayurveda education, knowledge, practice and policies. To maintain health and wellbeing Ayurveda's ancient knowledgeand practice needs to be applied at individual, community and health care provider levels and not belimited to the medical system. The current over medicalisation of society is a potential threat to humanhealth and well-being. Ayurveda and LHT knowledge can provide essential teachings and practices tocounter-balance this current trend through encouraging a population's self-reliance in its health.© 2018 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Publishing Services byElsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

"It's 100% for me": hospital practitioners' perspectives on mandatory HIV testing.

This article explores the thinking of medical practitioners working in nine hospitals spread across five cities in India, on a contested subject - mandatory HIV testing of patients prior to surgery. We used in-depth interviews with practitioners and an interpretive analytical approach to understand their decisions to conduct mandatory tests. While many in the public health community see mandatory testing as an unacceptable violation of patient autonomy, the practitioners widely regarded it as a valuable cost-saving innovation for obviating transmission of infection during surgery. These conceptions are rooted in the day-to-day logic of practice which defines practitioners’ actions - imperative of personal security, investment in core occupational roles and the importance of harmonious relations with co-workers. The experiences of hospitals with contrasting policies on mandatory HIV testing shows how an approach that balances patients’ needs with an appreciation of practitioners’ perspectives may result in more workable solutions for field-level ethical dilemmas.