A customer waits for a herbal prescription at the camp. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, Feb. 12: Citizens can now rediscover the goodness of herbs that has been associated with India’s history from time immemorial. The Tribal Culture Society opened the city’s first herbal clinic at the Tribal Culture Centre in Sonari today.

A two-day camp on herbal medicines is also being held at the centre.

Conceptualised to give a boost to herbal treatment, the clinic would first operate from a small room at the centre and would be transferred to a state-of-the-art clinic after March.

“These facilities have been available here for quite some time, but now we have identified around 15 vaids of Patamda who would visit the city on particular days to prescribe herbal medicines,” said Shiv Kumar, in-charge of the two-day herbal camp at TCC.

The camp, which began on Sunday, saw 11 renowned vaids from Patamda visit the TCC campus to give free medicines to the patients .

“These medicines can work wonders but there is not much awareness in the urban areas. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea to popularise the concept in the city,” said Kumar.

Prior to this, a similar camp was organised in Patamda, but this is the first time that people would be able to avail of these facilities on a larger platform.

“These are not branded medicines by a pharma giants, but are made by rural vaids using traditional herbs collected from the jungles,” said Haradhan Pramanik, a vaid visiting the camp.

From regular ailments to arthritis and snakebites, vaids provide treatment using herbal plant extracts.

“We have inherited this art from our forefathers. We know about the benefits one can derive using these herbs,” said Krishna Kumar Mahato, the senior-most vaid at the camp.