December 19, 2025
In his Hindustan Times column, OHT’s Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan explores whether Ayurveda, a traditional medical system that originated in India and emphasizes prevention, lifestyle, and personalized care, can meaningfully contribute to population health. Ayurveda is widely used for everyday wellness and some forms of treatment, yet it remains largely outside formal public-health policy.
For global audiences, Ayurveda is not simply “alternative medicine.” It is a long-standing system that tailors care to individual biology rather than standardized protocols. Dr. Laxminarayan explores whether such an approach can work on a population scale, which requires consistency, evaluation, and predictability. Using maternal anemia in India as a case study, he highlights where standard public-health strategies succeed, where they fall short, and how Ayurveda’s systems-based insights might help explain uneven outcomes.
He argues that Ayurveda’s relevance depends on rigorous evidence, better safety monitoring, and clear limits. Without strong research and regulation, its potential cannot be realized responsibly.
“Our approach to Ayurveda needs to decide what role traditional medical systems will play in addressing public health challenges. In the case of Western medicine, those approaches were innovated elsewhere, and we could easily adapt them. But in the case of Ayurveda, we will have do that work ourselves if we are to successfully use it to solve our most pressing public health challenges. And that means asking tough questions of where Ayurveda delivers measurable benefit at scale — and being equally clear about where it falls short.”
Read here.
