National health, heritage and national security are not three entities but one interconnected reality. This is interwoven with a fourth component: national economy. Today we can see this link being played out in a practical sense all around us in this Covid-19 pandemic backdrop. The missing component in the current scenario is national heritage.
We generally make the mistake of thinking national heritage as confined to ancient monuments and structures. We forget that intangible heritage covers a wide range of knowledge – linked with those diverse monuments but in our modern segmenting of heritage, we do not see the connection easily. Much of our inability to deal with modern challenges is because we have allowed ourselves to become distanced from this wealth. Sri Lanka boasts of the world’s first hospital in Mihintale but as a nation, we have allowed colonisation, globalisation and the idealising of the Western science based medical advancements to monopolise our minds. This has made us ignorant to our ancient medical sciences and its current relevance.
Unique medical tradition
Sri Lanka’s unique medical tradition belonging to the majority Sinhala community; Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala wedakama) is part of Sri Lankan Ayurveda. As a nation, we also have the Siddha medical practice of Tamil heritage prevalent in the North and the Unani medical system part of the Muslim heritage, used in the East of the country. All three medical systems have the commonality of being nature based and concentrated primarily at preventing the body succumbing to illnesses, i.e. strengthening the natural resilience of the body.
The health of a nation equals economic prosperity. This in turn equals national security. A nation vulnerable in health and dependent solely on the rest of the world for the wellbeing of its people is in a dicey position.
It is only when a nation has created its health solutions, perfecting its inherent or adopted medical knowledge that it can be absolutely be sure of the safety of its own people. Many developing countries have no option but to be dependent on medical solutions offered by other countries in major health crisis situations.
But does Sri Lanka have to follow suit, especially when the current health predicament is about immunity boosting, the core expertise enshrined in Sri Lanka’s main traditional medical system; Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama) that is an integral component in Sri Lankan Ayurveda? Do we have to merely be copy cats of how other countries manage the current global health challenge – the Covid-19 pandemic?
Depending only on Western science alternatives can create serious economic vulnerability and dependency on world superpowers. This can be a dangerous trend especially as we do not know how long Covid-19 will last and what other pandemics may surface; possibly ones far more complex than an immune impairing flu imposter.
Purchasing health solutions costing billions of rupees repeatedly from other countries adds to economic vulnerability. This economic drainage can get complicated and manifest into diverse security based vulnerability. This is especially so when Sri Lanka is currently facing serious shortages of cash reserves. International interference in Sri Lanka’s internal matters and manipulation can increase when our economic pressures increase.
It is upto the collective conscience of the country to prevent Sri Lanka getting further into an economic quagmire that may make it weak amid international pressures in the alleged war crimes saga that plays out year after year. We all know that the key qualification of the so called judges of human rights is not their morality but their economic power.
Technology
There are unconfirmed (wild) reports of how at least one Western superpower may be incorporating bio-intelligence gathering technology which will be able to monitor human activity and gather information. These are unconfirmed information that falls in the category of unfounded speculation. Given the high controversy, top confidentiality and sensitivity of any such information, it will never be possible to have an open discussion of such and it will largely be confined to the category of mythical conspiracy theories.
However, the fact remains that it is in 2015 that Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates warned of a ‘killer virus.’ In a TED talk in 2015, Gates declared that the US and the rest of the world was not prepared for the pandemic that was to hit them. Gates was cited as saying that it is not a war that will end up killing over ten million people in the next few decades but a highly infectious virus. Bill Gates is now warning the world to be prepared for ‘bio terrorism’ that he said will follow Covid. How well is Sri Lanka keeping abreast of these global machinations?
Concerning the warning on bio warfare, are small countries such as Sri Lanka ready with harnessing its expertise to face this new sinister world war? Are small countries such as Sri Lanka helpless as it may seem and do they have to depend on Western science based expertise alone?
Moving away from beaten track
It has to be pointed out that even Western science expertise which Sri Lanka has, can be moulded in unique ways enabling the moving away from the beaten track. This Cuba, the Mecca of medical innovation cum independence, had done in its combatting through bacteria injections, the breeding of mosquitos that carry Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika which became serious health threats to Latin America in the recent past.
It is not impossible for Western science professionals in Sri Lanka to research into solutions that probably integrate our ancient heritage, in seeking novel solutions for the current pandemic, which is now deffusing itself into diverse mutations referred to as variants. Even a nonmedical person with a general understanding of exosomes, sub particles of DNA that is sent out through exhaling (this means the more healthy – the more strong the immune system of the population, the ‘mutation’ of a virus becomes weaker and weaker). The opposite, i.e. a population without a strong immune system will enable a stronger virus that metamorphoses into different vicious avatars (variants).
The difference between the Western science dependent world and ancient societies is the difference between the synthetic and the natural. For example, in the West, every winter season the population takes flu vaccines whereas Sri Lankans studying abroad will be armed with their range of Lankan kothamalli, ginger, turmeric and a host of traditional spices. In the long run, the most resilient immunity is from those who have not suffered what we can call vaccine fatigue.
Reverting to the analysis of exosomes, we can make a small hypothesis. If Sri Lanka had begun a national plan using the mass media from last March, to enlist its 30,000 or so wedamahattayas and Ayurveda doctors, to advise the nation on the traditional immunity boosting food (Sri Lanka has an unimaginable scope of it, especially in the villages), we could have had a different situation today related to this pandemic.
These physicians could have advised the nation what food to avoid - for example gluten infused foods such as bread, canned food with preservatives and fast foods. China had made it compulsory for every household to use vapor inhalation which is a component of its traditional medicine. Sri Lanka has the same tradition in its indigenous medical science but with much more armour; i.e. with a range of herbs, roots, tree bark and leaves as this paper focused on in a detailed instructive interview last year with Ayurveda Doctor, S.M.S. Samarakoon, the Head of the Unit of Deshiya Chikitsa at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine, University of Colombo.
What is needed at present is to create a solid foundation to find whatever solution within our power in facing an unpredictable global health crisis which has brought Western science to its knees.
Self-confidence and commitment
Self-confidence and commitment is what is required. Alongside our traditional physicians, Sri Lanka has Western medical professionals who have used Western science as solutions for cancer such as through a commonly found vegetable; Karawila, (Bitter Gourd) using its seeds. These these are now widely used in Sri Lanka, fully curing cancer patients and are being widely exported.
It is interesting to note that several foreign nationals have contacted our traditional physicians in this Covid backdrop. Several physicians have had offers made to help them re-locate to at least three Western countries and set up Sri Lankan traditional medicine units in those countries. In 1995, US patented Tumeric for wound healing (contested by India) while Kothalahimbutu, (Salacia Reticulata) commonly used in Sri Lanka as treatment for diabetes was patented by Japan.
These are few instances that show that although we have underestimated our heritage, foreign nations may not be as ignorant as us on the near miraculous value of our traditional medicine. Research shows that the instances that foreigners seeking our senior traditional physicians for curing incurable diseases are many. Even in a backdrop of Sri Lanka not prioritising or mainstreaming its Deshiya Chikitsa/Sri Lankan Ayurveda knowledge for COVID19, a recent research by tourism authorities here involving foreign tourists showed that these foreigners wanted to come to Sri Lanka for Lankan Ayurveda.
We have not come anywhere near in realising what the bold use of our traditional medicine would mean for tourism in these difficult times and thereby for a Covid centric economic revival. To promote our traditional medicine for tourism alone and not use it for our pandemic solution would greatly weaken our case.
Sri Lanka remains one of the few countries that still has an indigenous medicine system rooted to nature in its most natural form, in a backdrop where India, once considered the South Asian hub of Ayurveda now having a fully mechanised version of that medical system. Thus the potential and scope is unlimited for Sri Lanka’s Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama)/Sri Lankan Ayurveda to be rejuvenated for not only Lankans but for a world fatigued by vaccines. This will greatly contribute to changing the country’s status quo from a mere ‘recipient’ to a proactive contributor to the world.
With the EU and the US taking initiatives to introduce resolutions linked to the ending of the terrorism in the country, Sri Lanka should pre-empt its economic and health assuring strategies with far thinking vision.
Vaccine competition
Sri Lanka has no logical reason to remain merely as passive beneficiaries or buyers of medical solutions from the world for this pandemic. We also cannot assume that biotechnology affiliated to nanotechnology that is wildly speculated to be associated with some vaccines may remain as only a mythical conspiracy theory for evermore or remain the domain of just one superpower alone. The cold war type of vaccine competition we are seeing among the current powerful global rivals that we are purchasing the vaccines from may lead to diverse machinations that are more complicated for small countries to comprehend.
The rivalry between these nations and Sri Lanka’s geo political position has to be considered seriously in the current context.
Hence Sri Lanka cannot be shy, frivolous or careless about the importance of building its self-sufficiency through its medical science as was done for thousands of years before the advent of the Western medical system which is just a few centuries old. The birth of the World Health Organization (WHO) meanwhile was in 1948.
Sri Lanka has to move beyond merely theorising about its traditional heritage. This heritage – the intangible component of it, related to our ancient medical science, has to be put to use when the country desperately needs it. The expertise of its traditional physicians has to be used. A systematic way to do this has to be found the soonest.
Sri Lanka should abandon the idea of thinking of its traditional medicinal system as inferior to Western medical science. It is this self-imposed inferiority that makes us a dependent nation. In the current context, by August 2020, at least 37 Lankan Traditional Physicians had begun researching into eliminating the first symptoms manifested through Covid-19 experimenting with different wattorus (compositions of different herb ingredients). The main focus was how to raise immunity to prevent the disease.
Some of these medications were adaptations of treatments that these physicians had used to effectively combat Dengue in the previous years, a disease for which Western medicine has no cure. A veteran traditional physician, D. D. Hettiarachchi was among the first traditional physicians to research into the immunity boosting for Covid-19 prevention. He sent his medications through his son working in Italy and through several philanthropic organisations to Sri Lankans battling the Covid-19 disease spread in Italy in early 2020.
This greatly contributed to stopping the spread of the disease among Sri Lankans in Italy. This writer has reliable reports of several Italians requesting the Lankan Covid medications for use and the rising popularity of Sri Lankan indigenous medicine in that country. It is not limited to Italy. Reports from countries such as England, Germany and France too show the popularity of the medications of Lankan physicians who had created Covid specific immunity boosters that are curative and preventive in nature. Hundreds of Lankan physicians are having continuous requests for exporting indigenous immunity boosters and Covid-19 medications and small packets or sachets of these are sold as much as 100 Euro.
Verification
These medications had been provided to Security Forces run quarantine centres during the first pandemic phase. In the 2nd and third wave, these medications were made available in prisons, especially by young Physician Amila Sanjeewa. This physician and Physician Kalutharage Sampath provided their medications to government departments, business institutions and garment factories and to many Covid afflicted persons. They have written proof by the patients that the disease was cured within three days.
Sri Lankan physician Laxman Embuldeniya who is also a qualified systems engineer used the Sinhala Wedakam knowledge passed down by his father to create an orally administered vaccine (as done historically in the Deshiya Chikitsa medical tradition). This is now used in garment factories in Sri Lanka and has had many inquiries from foreign countries. It doubles up also as a medication for those afflicted with Covid-19. From January 2021, this physician has been researching the efficacy of the treatment and has found that only less than 1% of persons who have taken the medication has contracted the Covid virus. These persons are cited as those who are excessive alcoholics/smokers and with much abused immune systems.
There are many others who have created immunity boosters for Covid. It is also known that almost every single wedamahattaya can treat Covid-19 early manifestations (which they say is akin to a semprathishyawa). They prioritise eliminating the first infections that set in the lungs so that it will not spread and eat into the immune system. The wide range of herbs also helps to restore any other malfunctions in the system that could surface with the Covid virus.
Apart from these traditional physicians, the few Sri Lankans who still retain some basic knowledge of immunity boosting through traditional food and herbs as well as Ath beheth, Goda wedakam and Kem krama which sustained us throughout our ancient civilisation, will not quiver in fear of this virus.
Hence a basic education of the masses of their own medical heritage pertaining to immunity boosting will prevent the over dependence on current super powers, at a time when the world is researching into Covid-19 which is still as mysterious as it was last year when the virus was new.
The responsibility to decrease Sri Lanka’s vulnerability falls upon every Sri Lankan who has to at least now re-discover the practical use of the indigenous knowledge we have been gifted with.
To do so is our national duty as well as our Karmic duty.