On Tuesday, thousands of Indian doctors are going to wear black armbands to protest against a guru and supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He claims that yoga and traditional medicine provides stronger protection against COVID-19 than vaccines.

Doctors have accused Baba Ramdev, a powerful yoga televange list of deliberately fuelling vaccine hesitancy and a suspicion of modern medicine to endorse his own ayurvedic medicine company, known as Patanjali Ayurved.

Dr John Austin Jayalal, who is a president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), said that Baba Ramdev is saying that don’t take the vaccine and allopathy is senseless and medicines are killing more people. His statements are causing confusion among the public and the central government should stop it.

Members of the Federation of Resident Doctors Associations who are on the front lines for treating critically ill coronavirus patients, have called for prosecuting Baba Ramdev under the Epidemic Diseases Act for “illogical, demeaning, unscientific and derogatory statements.

Since February, there have been tensions seen between Ramdev and medical professionals, when he launched Coronil, an ayurvedic Covid concoction, at a high-profile event. Even Harsh Vardhan, the health minister, spoke on the panel and praised Patanjali.

The IMA had also criticised the health minister for giving his credibility to “a falsely invented unscientific product”, motivating a Patanjali spokesperson to answer that doctors had problems accepting the truth.

Conflicts increased sharply during the 2nd Covid wave when hospitals were full with critically ill patients and were facing shortages of beds, drugs, oxygen and staff. Over 170,000 Indians have died from Covid infection in the past two months.

Baba Ramdev’s yoga channel is watched by millions, who mocks modern medicine as “a stupid broke science”. He told his followers in a viral social media video that several Indian doctors have succumbed to Covid-19 despite taking the vaccine doses. He said that what kind of doctors are they if they cannot save themselves?

Dr Manish, the president of FORDA said that Tuesday’s will be a “black day of protest” but maintained that it shouldn’t compromise patient care.

Indian doctors have had troubled relations with the Modi government. The IMA had opposed New Delhi’s decision to allow alternative medicine practitioners to perform 58 types of surgeries and efforts to integrate traditional Indian medicine into curricula of modern medical schools.

Source: Financial Times