Medicalisation and Ayurveda: the need for pluralism and balance in global health systems
Authors
John Porter
aLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
Mahesh Mathpati
aLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
Unnikrishnan Payyappallimana
bThe University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), 74/2, Jarakabande Kaval, Post Attur Via Yelahanka, Bengaluru, 560064, India
Darshan Shankar
bThe University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), 74/2, Jarakabande Kaval, Post Attur Via Yelahanka, Bengaluru, 560064, India
Keywords:
Ayurveda, Medicalisation, Population self-reliance, Medical pluralism, Global health, Health Policy and Systems Research
Abstract
The current global economic and biomedical perspectives contribute content, strategy, and values to global health systems, like objectification and competition, which encourage the medicalisation of the system. Medicalisation overlooks our interdependence with other beings, the environment and biosphere. In contrast, ancient health traditions like Ayurveda, derived from Asian cultures, provide knowledge of the human being's composition of five basic states of nature that need to remain in constant equilibrium to ensure health (Svasthya). Asian health traditions encourage values like vulnerability and respect to facilitate an inherent relationship with the internal and external environment. The recent pandemic has revealed the fragile vulnerability in this nexus and the consequences to human health and well-being when that equilibrium is disturbed. Serious deliberations and discussions are needed between the modern economic and the Asian frameworks for healthcare which result in two different approaches to health and to health systems. This debate may encourage the creation of a philosophy and structure for a new global pluralistic health system more aligned to nature. These deliberations need to encourage the discussion of Svasthya (health), Soukhya (sustainable happiness), and the inner and outer ecological landscapes experienced by human beings that can be understood through mindful self-awareness. Global health systems need to evolve in the direction of a different, pluralistic philosophy of health that encourages a ‘population's self-reliance in health’ through an intimate and integrated connection with nature.
Keywords: Ayurveda, Medicalisation, Population self-reliance, Medical pluralism, Global health, Health Policy and Systems Research
Author Biographies
John Porter, aLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
bThe University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), 74/2, Jarakabande Kaval, Post Attur Via Yelahanka, Bengaluru, 560064, India
Mahesh Mathpati, aLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom
bThe University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), 74/2, Jarakabande Kaval, Post Attur Via Yelahanka, Bengaluru, 560064, India
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