As healthcare debates rage on throughout the world, a heartening event is occurring in my hometown, Bangalore.
Backed by state and central governments, the fourth World Ayurveda Congress is being held in the sprawling Palace Grounds. More than 5,000 delegates are expected to attend and present papers.
The main goal, according to the organisers, is to figure out a way to integrate alternative medicine (they prefer to call it "traditional" medicine) with mainstream health care.
China has attempted something similar with its own indigenous traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Most Chinese hospitals have acupuncturists and herbalists on staff. In Beijing, a sprawling hospital devoted only to TCM attracts hordes of patients each day.
Alternative medicine, or complementary medicine as some would have it, makes sense, given rising healthcare costs. Intercontinental Marketing Services Health forecasts that the global pharmaceutical market will grow 5 to 7 per cent next year, reaching US$880 billion (Dh3.23 trillion).
The flip side of this staggering number is that 70 per cent of the population, particularly in developing countries, cannot afford western medicines and are therefore not part of this pharmaceutical pie. Instead they rely on alternative medicine for all their healthcare needs. They visit the village healer, or hakim, for cures. Trend forecasters predict that even advanced countries are not exempt from the growing desire to incorporate alternative medicine into traditional healthcare models.
According to Alternative Medicine Online, the British National Health Service runs several hospitals devoted exclusively to homeopathy, and in Germany one out of three drugs prescribed is a herb. One in three Americans has used some form of alternative health care.
As someone who is not dismissive of alternative healing systems, and yet is somewhat sceptical of their claims, I was interested in the ayurvedic congress because of the integrative approach it seemed to take. Like most Indians, I grew up with ayurveda and unani. When I got a cold, my mother would boil some holy basil leaves, steep them in warming spices such as cumin and serve them with honey. My grandfather, an allopathic doctor, depended on his weekly oil massages to get him through his busy practice. Even today, I fall back on ayurvedic herbs when I fall sick.
That said, this 5,000-year-old Indian healing system has failed to keep up with the times. There are no controlled studies of the kind that western pharmaceutical companies have to undertake; there is very little clinical research; and treatment protocols such as nose washes, enemas and sweating have not been contemporised.
Bringing ancient empirical systems into the modern age is a good start. "The purpose of this congress is to have a dialogue on how to integrate ayurveda into allopathic hospitals," says Dr Issac Mathai, a homeopath who practises in the US, UK and India. Dr Mathai founded Soukya, which offers residential holistic health care at five-star prices.
"Traditional healing systems such as ayurveda and acupuncture don't work for every illness, but for arthritis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, musculoskeletal conditions, and anything to do with the nerves, we have fantastic treatment protocols," says Dr Mathai. "One hospital in Kerala is helping the so-called uncurable western conditions like retinal detachment and other eye conditions."
Dr Mathai estimates there are about 200,000 ayurvedic practitioners in India today. In a study he conducted at a Bangalore hospital, he integrated what he calls "traditional" medicine with allopathic medicine and discovered that it brought down healthcare costs by 50 per cent for acute conditions and 30 per cent for chronic conditions.
"Ayurveda is all about wellness and prevention," he says. "But it has limitations. It cannot cure diabetes, but it can play a positive role in its management."
In a pioneering move, the Karnataka state government has invested 10 million rupees (Dh814,683) to start an ayurvedic ward in KC general hospital, the oldest state-run hospital, where low-income households come for care. The payment model follows a three-tier system in which the poor pay nominal rates, the middle-class pay at cost and the rich pay at a level that subsidises the poor.
This is typical in India, where hospitals affiliated with churches and other religious institutions routinely ask for your income when you register; and bill you accordingly.
The Indian healthcare industry is experiencing phenomenal growth and is expected to be a $280bn industry by 2020. No one claims that ayurveda and acupuncture are going to replace allopathy. The best that one can hope for is that the Chinese wall between the two systems will come down.
There are some illnesses such as the asthma my husband suffers from, for instance, that respond better to ancient systems rather than modern steroids. Other illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis could use the cushion that an oil massage can offer. It may not cure but it will "rejuvenate", as the ayurvedic doctors like to say.
In the end, I believe the health insurance companies will be the driver. When they embrace alternative medicine as they have started doing in selective hospitals and with certain diseases, the economies of scale will provide the momentum for all healthcare practitioners - traditional and modern - to work together and come up with an integrated model.
It will not only reduce costs, but the preventative protocols that alternative systems focus on could even reduce illnesses.
Shoba Narayan is a writer based in Bangalore and the author of Monsoon Diary
Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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hall of shame
SUNDERLAND 2002-03
No one has ended a Premier League season quite like Sunderland. They lost each of their final 15 games, taking no points after January. They ended up with 19 in total, sacking managers Peter Reid and Howard Wilkinson and losing 3-1 to Charlton when they scored three own goals in eight minutes.
SUNDERLAND 2005-06
Until Derby came along, Sunderland’s total of 15 points was the Premier League’s record low. They made it until May and their final home game before winning at the Stadium of Light while they lost a joint record 29 of their 38 league games.
HUDDERSFIELD 2018-19
Joined Derby as the only team to be relegated in March. No striker scored until January, while only two players got more assists than goalkeeper Jonas Lossl. The mid-season appointment Jan Siewert was to end his time as Huddersfield manager with a 5.3 per cent win rate.
ASTON VILLA 2015-16
Perhaps the most inexplicably bad season, considering they signed Idrissa Gueye and Adama Traore and still only got 17 points. Villa won their first league game, but none of the next 19. They ended an abominable campaign by taking one point from the last 39 available.
FULHAM 2018-19
Terrible in different ways. Fulham’s total of 26 points is not among the lowest ever but they contrived to get relegated after spending over £100 million (Dh457m) in the transfer market. Much of it went on defenders but they only kept two clean sheets in their first 33 games.
LA LIGA: Sporting Gijon, 13 points in 1997-98.
BUNDESLIGA: Tasmania Berlin, 10 points in 1965-66
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”