Saturday, Feb 20, 2010
To ascertain the facilities available

Tirunelveli: A two-member team from Central Council for Indian Medicine visited the Government Siddha Medical College at Palayamkottai on Friday to ascertain the facilities available there and its genuine requirements to provide better medical assistance to the patients.

Vice-president of CCIM V. Stanley Jones and its executive committee member V. Arunachalam, who went around the hospital and the college for a while to check the existing infrastructure facilities, also interacted with the faculty members and others. During an informal chat with the reporters, Dr. Stanley Jones said the team from CCIM would usually submit its findings based on which the decision on admitting the students in the siddha medical colleges every year and termination of students' admission had been taken in some cases after some of the colleges were found to be having poor infrastructure facilities.

The team would make appropriate recommendations to the government if it happened to find an insufficiency on the part of infrastructure or medicines being given at Government Siddha Medical College, Palayamkottai and its hospital that was providing reliable medicare through a 10,000-year-old proven system of medicine.

On the sustained move to shift the Survey of Medicinal Plants – Siddha from the Government Siddha Medical College to a yet to be established private institution in Salem, Dr. Stanley replied that he was not aware of such a move.

“If this move is true, then it is really a matter of concern... The college, having postgraduate course, should have such a well-equipped unit here to enrich its students,” he opined.

He appealed to the media, governments and those who had benefited out of the siddha formulations to make Siddha medicine system more popular among the public.