Agartala: Tripura has become the only state in eastern India to receive an international award for tele-homoeopathy, where patients in rural areas are diagnosed by doctors through video-conferencing, a minister said here Wednesday.
“Tripura recently received the international award at the Health World Expo-2011 in New Delhi for successful implementation of THTM (tele-homeopathy treatment method),” state Health Minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters.
“The tele-homoeopathy treatment project was launched in Tripura in February last year and so far 21,550 rural people, 60 percent of them women, have been treated,” the minister added.
The project was initiated in different parts of the country by the Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) department under the union ministry of health and family welfare.
Patients and doctors sitting in different places, including Kolkata and Delhi, can interact with each other through the THTM.
He said that the medicines are provided free of cost to the patients.
Chakraborty said tele-homoeopathy facilities have been extended in ten rural locations in Tripura following an agreement between Tripura government, Kolkata-based National Institute of Homoeopathy and private firm Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited. “Patients of polyarthritis, women’s gynaecological disorders, anaemia, pregnancy-related diseases, acute and chronic respiratory disease, gastro-intestinal diseases, geriatric problems, skin disorder, and communicable diseases have found exceptional results through the THTM,” the minister added. (IANS)