The Centre’s apex think tank has declined to share a government-appointed expert panel’s observations on a proposal to integrate modern and traditional medicine through curriculum changes that had drawn criticism from sections of modern doctors.

Niti Aayog’s health and family welfare division on Tuesday informed ophthalmologist and RTI activist K.V. Babu, who had sought the panel’s report, that the document is exempt from disclosure under Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005.

Section 8 (1) exempts from disclosure any information that could harm India's economic, scientific, security, or strategic interests, disrupt foreign relations, breach parliamentary privilege, or undermine commercial confidentiality, among other grounds such as court prohibitions, fiduciary obligations, or risks to personal safety.

Babu had sought the report of Working Group 1, a panel set up by the Union health ministry in October 2020, and asked to outline curriculum principles and draft a plan for the phased rollout of an integrated medicine education programme.

Modern doctors in India have opposed the integration plan, arguing that some traditional medicine is practised in the absence of rigorous scientific evidence and that integration would allow traditional practitioners a “backdoor entry” into modern practice. “It is baffling why the government does not want to share the working group’s report,” Babu, who practises in Kannur and has used the RTI route for over a decade to seek information on health issues, told The Telegraph.

“We expect transparency in such major public health initiatives with significant implications for patients,” said Babu, who is a member of an internal decision-making panel of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest body of modern physicians.

The 12-member Working Group I, chaired by S.K. Sarin, director of the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, was also supposed to outline principles of teaching and learning strategies and estimate faculty and infrastructure requirements for the integrated education initiative.

Babu had filed his RTI query after Prataprao Jadhav, the Union minister of state for ayush (ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha, homeopathy) and health, was quoted in the media last month saying the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, would introduce India’s first integrated MBBS-BAMS course. At present, the BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) course is available only in ayurveda colleges.

The IMA, responding to the minister’s statement, had iterated its long-standing opposition to the proposal for integrated medication education, calling it a “misadventure” that would facilitate the production of “hybrid doctors who will be only qualified quacks”.

“We are not in any way opposed to ayurveda or any other traditional system of medicine — let the government fund and propagate them as much as it wants,” Dilip Bhanushali, the IMA’s national president, told this newspaper on Tuesday. “But attempts to mix them with modern medicine could have adverse impacts
on patients.”

Sections of modern doctors believe the integrated courses will legitimise the practice of ayurveda-trained doctors prescribing modern medicines.

Many opponents of integration have argued that medical practice in ayurveda is not always backed by rigorous scientific evidence — including elaborate lab and animal studies and clinical trials — that precedes modern medical practice.

But ayush experts favouring integration point to multiple scientific studies in modern medical institutions that they say signal efforts to evaluate ayurveda under modern protocols.