Shri Shripad Yesso Naik, Union Minister for AYUSH and Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State PMO will jointly launch the Post-Harvest Management Centre for Medicinal Plants at Bhaderwah as well as 21 AYUSH Health & Wellness Centres in Jammu and Kashmir tomorrow. The inauguration will be done through a digital event.  Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary Ministry of AYUSH will also participate in the program.

During current year, in Jammu and Kashmir, work on establishing 194 AYUSH HWCs is going on and the Ministry of AYUSH has provided Rs 12.81 crore Central grant for this purpose. There is a target of establishing 319 AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres in next 3 years in the UT. Among them, the Ministry of AYUSH is launching 21 AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres in Jammu and Kashmir on the 25th September 2020.

Establishing “Post-Harvest Management Centre” at Bhaderwah

 Jammu & Kashmir has great potential for cultivation of Himalayan medicinal plant species which have a good domestic as well as global market demand. The people of the UT have traditionally been engaged with cultivation and trade of medicinal plants. It was a long pending demand of the people of Jammu & Kashmir to have Post Harvest Management facilities in the area. It would help in motivating farmers to adopt medicinal plants cultivation and processing as long term land use practices to augment their income.

The PHM will have facilities for drying, sorting, processing, certification, packaging and scientific storage of herbal raw materials produced and collected by local people, so as to have value addition and better price to farmers.

The Post-Harvest Management Centre is expected to develop linkage with local Agro-Research Centre of Agriculture University to provide Research and Development backup in cultivation, post-harvest management and marketing including e-market support to farmers.

 AYUSH Health &Wellness Centres

Under Ayushman Bharat Scheme, the Ministry of AYUSH has been mandated to operationalise 12,500 Health and Wellness Centres across the country in a phased manner over a period of five years i.e. by 2023-24, by upgrading existing stand-alone AYUSH dispensaries and sub-health centres, at a total cost of Rs. 3399.35 Crore.

The vision is to establish a holistic wellness model to reduce the disease burden, out of pocket expenditure and to provide informed choice to the needy public. The main focus of AYUSH interventions would be to empower masses for “self-care” on prevention of diseases through a healthy lifestyle, food, Yoga and medicinal plants. Management of diseases through evidence-based approach is another component of the programme.

The programme was launched by PM on 30th August 2019 by inaugurating 10 AYUSH HWCs in Haryana.