Conceived in 2008, country’s first All India Institute of Ayurveda (AAIA) in the national Capital is yet to start functioning even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been stressing on the need to promote the alternate traditional medicine system. Proposed to be an apex institute for Ayurveda on the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), the project was given nod with an aim to provide postgraduate and doctoral courses in various disciplines of Ayurveda.
The institute, spread over ten acres of land at Jasola, also proposes to focus on fundamental research in Ayurveda, drug development, standardisation, quality control, safety evaluation and clinical research in the alternate traditional medicines. The project was to be completed by 2011 as the country’s first referral hospital. However, seven years on, the project is yet to be operationalised. Due to this delay, the project cost has escalated from Rs 134 crore to Rs 157 crore.
Sources said that 95 per cent of building work has been completed while medical equipment and ancillary services are to be finished by August this year. Hospital furniture and kitchen and mortuary works were to be completed by February and January respectively, just 75 per cent work has been finished so far. A Parliamentary panel has recently expressed its unhappiness at the tardy progress of implementation of the project resulting in cost escalation as well as in surrendering of the budgeted funds.
“Keeping in view the inordinate delay in operationalisation of this project, the Committee feels that the existing system of monitoring leaves much to be desired and warrants a comprehensive review. “Setting up of the AIIA is a very ambitious project and is mandated to focus on very critical areas like fundamental research, drug development, quality control etc. in Ayurveda,” the panel headed by BSP MP SC Mishra said in a report tabled in Parliament last month. The committee has suggested periodic meetings to review and constantly monitor the progress of operationalisation of the Institute and resolve forthwith whatever procedural or administrative hurdles are encountered in executing the project.