Indian Medical Association Slams Health Minister For Promoting Patanjali’s Covid-19 Medicine

A lot of speculations and controversial statements were involved, when Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd launched its first Ayurvedic medicine, Coronil to cure coronavirus patients.

The Yoga Guru claimed that trial results of the drug on Covid-positiive patients showed a recovery rate of 100% in about 7 days, while curing 63% patients in only 3 days.

Patanjali Ayurveda also claimed to have received its certification from the Ayush ministry for production of Coronil, while being sanctioned as Covid-19 treatment drug as per the WHO’s certification, on February 19.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Monday expressed its fury on the ‘blatant lie of WHO certification’ claim made by Patanjali in regards to its Coronil tablet, while simultaneously demanding an explanation from the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, under whose jurisdiction the time drug was launched.

IMA Seeks Explanation from Health Minister

 Amid the peak of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda launched the ‘world’s first Ayurveda’ based medicine for positive patients, which claimed to treat any Covid-19 patients within 5-14 days.

The Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan was present on the launch of this drug.

On February 19 at a press conference, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) came at Patanjali for making blatantly false claims of Coronil being WHO certified, while shooting spears at the Health minister too, for supporting Patanjali’s false claims.

In the press conference, the IMA demanded an explanation from Harsh Vardhan on supporting Patanjali’s claim of WHO certification and said that ‘the association will write to the National Medical Commission, seeking a suo moto explanation for this “blatant disrespect” to the code of conduct of the Medical Council of India’.

The IMA also demanded the HM to address the nation’s queries on whether it was fair and appropriate to release such false claims to the whole country, especially during a pandemic.

As per the statement, “Being a Health Minister of the country, how justified is it to release such falsely fabricated unscientific products to people of the whole country and how ethical was it to promote the product in unethical, wrong and false ways”.

Having said that, the IMA has now sought clarifications from Patanjali on the complete timeline of clinical trials of Coronil and is also unsure of involvement of patients in the double blind and/or single blind clinical trials.