The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking that yoga guru Ramdev be booked under sedition charges for allegedly spreading misinformation on vaccination and challenging government protocols for treatment of Covid-19 patients.
The letter said that in a viral video, Ramdev was seen claiming that 10,000 doctors have died in the country despite taking both the doses of the vaccine. Such statements were persuading people not to get the Covid-19 vaccines against national interest of overcoming the pandemic, IMA said in its letter. “This in our opinion is a clear-cut case of sedition in addition to causing irreversible damage to the national interest and the poor masses of this country,” read the letter by IMA.
The association clarified that the country lost 753 doctors during the first wave of the pandemic when vaccines weren’t available and 513 so far during the second wave of the pandemic. “None in the first wave could receive the vaccine and the majority who had died in the second wave also could not take their vaccine for various reasons,” the letter said.
The IMA alleged that this was a ploy to make profits at the expense of several lives. “We opposed certain drugs which were being falsely promoted as “curative” drugs, without any approval from the ministry or competent authorities. Ministry of AYUSH had also issued a Press Release to Patanjali to stop advertising or claiming its drug Coronil as a cure for Covid-19,” the letter said.
{{/usCountry}}The IMA alleged that this was a ploy to make profits at the expense of several lives. “We opposed certain drugs which were being falsely promoted as “curative” drugs, without any approval from the ministry or competent authorities. Ministry of AYUSH had also issued a Press Release to Patanjali to stop advertising or claiming its drug Coronil as a cure for Covid-19,” the letter said.
{{/usCountry}}The IMA also claimed that it was making the task of frontline workers of getting people vaccinated more difficult. “They (frontline workers) are being assaulted and attacked by people who have fallen for such rumours and superstitions. In some cases, it has been reported that people are fleeing the vaccination drives even by jumping into the river,” the letter said.
The Uttarakhand chapter of IMA has also sent a ₹1,000-crore defamation notice to the Yoga guru.
The Indian Medical Association had previously demanded apology from Ramdev over his remarks on allopathic medicine calling it a “stupid science”. He withdrew his statements after receiving a strong-worded letter from Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, who called his remarks “inappropriate”. However, Ramdev retorted by posing 25 questions to the IMA in an ‘open letter’ on Twitter, asking if allopathy offered permanent relief for ailments such as hypertension and type-1 and 2 diabetes. He went on to list modern-day ailments such as Parkinson’s disease and wondered if allopathy had any painless cure to treat infertility as well as to reverse ageing and increase hemoglobin.