At the height of the war in Sri Lanka, Dr Kurunathan Srigananathan realised they were running short on medicines in Jaffna. With local pharmacies sold out of vital drugs, the population were struggling. Malaria, in particular, was a huge problem.
Sriganananthan had a solution. Since 1993, he had been part of a producer group called the Siddha Medicine Production Sales and Service Cooperative Society. Better known simply as COPHARM, the society produced indigenous medicines based on recipes that were centuries old. One of these was a treatment for malaria that utilised three local herbs. “We made it fully available to all and saved hundreds of lives,” Srigananathan claims. As the fighting escalated, more and more people turned to Siddha for relief from the ailments that beset them.
Siddha has a long history in these parts. The earliest practitioners came from South India, and the medicines they created were designed to offer holistic solutions to disease. Some treatments were prophylactic—intended to be preventative—and diet and lifestyle were key to healing.
Srigananathan himself came from a family of such healers. While his grandfather and father were self-taught, Srigananathan was the first in his family to study the subject at the Lanka Siddha Ayurvedic Medical College. “I felt compelled,” he remembers now, “I believed that if I did not carry on the family tradition, it would be lost.”