Despite much talks of promotion of preventive healthcare in the country to cut down out of pocket expenditure, the two-year-old Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) failed to draw attention of the Finance Ministry this Budget.
The alternative traditional medicines found no mention in the Budget 2016-17 announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Expressing shock, officials in the Ministry were clueless for this ignorance claiming that the fund utilisation was the highest this time by the Ministry. Against revised estimate of Rs1,125 crore in 2015-16, the Ministry has received Rs1,326.20 crore in this Budget.
The poor allocation will hamper its several schemes, they said. Incidentally, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in his Rail Budget last week had announced introduction of AYUSH systems in five railway hospitals.