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SPPU gets Rs 3.5 crore grant for medical research from AYUSH
This help in human resource development and building of a critical mass with research skills.
The School of Health Science under the Savitribai Phule Pune University has received a grant of Rs 3.5 crore after being declared an AYUSH centre for excellence. This was declared by the vice chancellor of the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Nitin Karmalkar.
“With the status of being a centre of excellence, the AYUSH ministry has given us a grant of about Rs 3.5 crore, which will be for three years,” said Karmalkar.
On July 18, the SPPU vice chancellor along with Dr Bhushan Patwardhan, director of the Centre for Complementary and Integrative Health (CCIH), declared that the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) has awarded the health science department the status of being a centre for excellence. The grant which comes as part of the status, has been given for a span of three years.
“This particular department is known for its research work in traditional medicine, and it is nationally as well as internationally acclaimed,” Karmalkar said. Dr Patwardhan, further added, “This is in recognition of almost three decades of research work undertaken by the school in the area of AYUSH systems or traditional medicine systems.”
He stated that the centre works to find scientific basis in the traditional forms of treatment under AYUSH, and it is because of their efforts in research work, published in national and international platforms, that it earned the recognition.
In addition to this, the centre has further received about ₹95 lakh from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This grant is to cover almost 15 fellowships under it’s purview.
Dr Patwardhan said,“However, there exists a big problem in this field, which is the scarcity of highly trained scientific resource in this field. To deal with this, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has given us a special grant of almost ₹95 lakh, plus 15 fellowships, which will be given to young teachers in medical colleges and AYUSH colleges. Through competitive selection processes, our University will receive 15 such teachers and researchers, and we will train them.”
Stating this to be a trans-disciplinary fellowship, which will help in human resource development and building of a critical mass with research skills, he said that the teachers from AYUSH backgrounds, will receive training in modern medicine, and vice versa.
The teachers eligible for the fellowship should be below the age of 45 years. “The selected teachers are to receive three months of residential training at Pune University. They are to undertake five different courses depending on their specialty, and will then be trained in the others as well.In a year, 15 teachers below the age of 45 will be trained under this fellowship, and as this is a three year programme, in total 45 of them will be given this opportunity,” he said.
As per the programme, the teachers will be given a research project. “Those research projects that will stand out, will receive ₹30 lakh as seed capital from the ministry to pursue their research. This is a research capacity building programme,” he said.
