Doctors in Tamil Nadu wear black badges, protest against mixopathy

Doctors affiliated to Indian Medical Association (IMA) across Tamil Nadu abstained from elective surgeries as part of the nation-wide to protest against the Centre allowing post-graduate practitioners of Ayurveda to be trained to perform surgical procedures.

However, the doctors continued to attend to emergency and Covid-19 related cases. They demanded the scrapping of the Central Council of Indian Medicines (CCIM) November 20 notification allowing the ayurveda practitioners to take up surgeries.

The protest was also against the National Education Policy 2020 and four committees set up by Niti Aayog for integration of healthcare systems, according to secretary of IMA (Tamil Nadu) Dr A K Ravikumar.

The gazette notification issued by the CCIM, a statutory body under the AYUSH Ministry, stated that postgraduate ayurveda medical students must be practically trained to acquaint with as well as to independently perform a list of 58 surgeries.

Private hospitals and clinics were closed for 12 hours as the some of the doctors were IMA members who participated in the strike, Ravikumar said. Government doctors expressed their solidarity with the IMA by wearing black badges while on work.

"We express solidarity with the IMAs protest against mixopathy by wearing black badges but without completely boycotting work. Our regular medicare services in all the government hospitals were not affected," secretary of Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association (TNGDA) Dr N Ravishankar said.