Ethnomedicine as Public Health

Abstract

Tribal healers, including Dais, are still visible and functional, despite techno-managerial policies to exterminate them. Yoga has already received international fame. Due to the side effects of modern drugs and the frustration arising thereof, Western people are turning to Asian Medical Systems in Ayurveda and Naturopathy. Ethnomedicine can become Public Health by (a) upscaling the knowledge of traditional herbalists and Dais about the great textual traditions to provide authorisation and confidence about their traditional practices. (b) Widening the curriculum and job chart of paramedics currently functional in healthcare facilities to include ethnomedicine and textual great tradition health concepts and practices. The present paper is based on ethnomedical studies in the tribal and rural blocks in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh during 2008–2016. The paramedics and traditional healers and Dais provide healthcare services at the doorstep of the rural and tribal people, not the doctors from any system of medicine that only manages the institutional OPD. How to turn the age-old experience of the people into evidence and establish linkage with the great textual tradition has to be an agenda of ethnomedical research. Concepts of Reverse Pharmacology and biodiversity could prove helpful in such analysis.