Mumbai : Former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was passionate about the ancient Indian medicine system of Ayurveda and was keen to modernise it on a global scale, the chief of an international NGO said here on Tuesday.
Praful Patel, a leading light of the International Ayurveda Foundation (IAF) in India, Britain and Switzerland learnt of Kalam’s love for Ayurveda when he met him in Rashtrapati Bha-van in November, 2005.
“We dis-cussed the many challenges faced by Ayurveda in India and abroad and sought his advice. He stressed the need to set up an Ayurveda Research and Dev-elopment Centre, both herbal and non-herbal products,” Patel said. Kalam desired it to be a joint effort of the Ayurvedic community and the Indian gov-ernment; the centre should pro-vide fool-proof testing and cer-tification of Ayurvedic and oth-er traditional medicinal produ-cts about their quality, safety, stability and efficacy.
“Such a multi-disciplinary lab would have qualified and experienced technical staff to operate sophi-sticated instrumentation, tech-niques for pharmacognostic, pharmacological, chemical and pharmaceutical standardisa-tion, the results of which would be internationally acceptable,” Patel said.
The IAF has now dev-eloped a project for an Ayurve-da Research and Develop-ment centre which would be on the lines of western medicines, he added.
