Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced government’s target of setting up 12,500 AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) Centres across India. Out of which government is trying to set up 4000 such centres in 2019 itself. The announcement was made by PM Modi during giving away Yoga Awards to winners for Outstanding Contribution for Promotion and Development of Yoga in New Delhi.

Key Highlights :

• During the Yoga Awards ceremony, PM Modi also released 12 commemorative postal stamps to honour eminent practitioners, scholars as well as Great Master Healers of AYUSH Systems.
• These commemorative postal stamps highlight great work and acknowledge achievements of Great Master Healers of AYUSH Systems.
• PM also launched 10 AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres located in Haryana- This is in line with Union Ministry of AYUSH’s commitment to make 12,500 AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres functional in next 3 years.
• In total around 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres (HWCs) are being opened across country.

Why AYUSH Centres?

• Objective:  Main focus of these centres will be to empower community for self care by assimilating AYUSH based healthy food and lifestyle, social behaviour as well as use of medicinal plants for primary health care (PHC).
• AYUSH and Yoga are strong pillars of ‘Fit India’ movement and are attributed to Yoga, Pranayama and Ayurveda. To provide comprehensive primary healthcare, AYUSH components have been integrated into health and wellness centres under  Ayushman Bharat  (PMJAY).
• These AYUSH centres would complement National Health Policy (NHP), 2017 that insists upon integrating and mainstreaming of AYUSH services in conventional health care delivery system.
• Significance: This would begin mainstreaming of preventive, holistic, rehabilitative, curative, and palliative AYUSH care for achieving comprehensive health care