Prez inaugurates NEHU Innovation Club
SHILLONG: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday inaugurated the Innovation Club at the NEHU campus here.
The President also witnessed an exhibition of Traditional Herbal Practitioners to commemorate the inauguration of the Club.
A total number of ten traditional practitioners participated in the exhibition.
“We have come up with this Innovation Club with the specific goal to preserve the knowledge of medical practitioners which has been handed over from generation to generation,” NEHU acting Vice Chancellor Prof P Shukla said while giving an insight on the idea behind the formation of the Innovation Club.
“The University professors are trying to gather some vital information from traditional practitioner on the science behind herbal plants and medicines which have been successful in curing diseases where allopathic system of medicine has not worked. Some professors would be interacting closely with the traditional medical practitioners to unearth the reason for the effectiveness of these herbal drugs,” Prof Shukla said. He said that they would also plan to develop new drugs through these herbal plants to control common ailments like blood pressure, sugar and cancer.
“We need to do a lot of work to develop such drugs,” Shukla said.
He said that the necessary infrastructures are in place to do chemical analysis of plan and herbs to identify the chemicals which are present in these traditional plants.
‘The University has already done some research on these herbal plants,” Prof Shukla added.
When asked if any specific funds have been allocated for this initiative, he said that he is not very sure if special funds have been earmarked for this.
“But I can assure that funds would not be a problem since there are projects which are taking up similar research studies,” the acting Vice Chancellor said.
He said that this whole concept emerged while planning for this convocation since the President was interested in knowing whether the University had taken up projects of preserving the traditional plants.
“We decided to come up with this Innovation Club to further expand the attempt on the part of University to conduct on in-depth research on the traditional plants,” Prof Shukla stated.
Patents’ exhibition
On the NEHU Professors’ Patents’ Exhibition which was on display on the occasion, Prof Shukla said that the University has done numerous researches which may not be of public interest. “Some of the researches have been patented and published in top journals,” Prof Shukla informed.