AYURVEDA NEWS ON CURING CEREBRAL PALSY

TIMES OF INDIA: Bihar man claims cure for cerebral palsy

PATNA: A diminutive 40-year-old vaidya (a practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine) from Forbesganj, a town on the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar, is pining to cure physicist Stephen Hawking, who, he thinks, is having the attack of cerebral palsy.

Given the opportunity, he said, he could have also ventured to cure the late Reliance chairman Dhirubhai Ambani.

"Hawking is an international mind. He needs to be healthy. I can cure him," is his passionate claim.

But what will he get if he becomes healthy? "I will get nothing; the international community will benefit from it, by his healthy presence," he says, adding: "And for me, my medicine will be known to lakhs of people who hope to get cured such patients in their families."

This vaidya is Pancham Kumar Das, who has formulated a herbal drug that "cures polio and cerebral palsy". Already, he has been approached by a former Prime Minister of India to cure a child relative.

The condition of the grandson of a secretary-rank official of the Nepal government has "improved overwhelmingly" under the treatment of Das. There are a host of others, including the relatives of IAS and IPS officers, who have been "cured" by him. As a matter of fact, he, as is the won't in the case of people like Das, is already a name in some circles by way of in-circle talks in Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bihar.

Besides, a noted neurosurgeon from the National Institute of Medical Sciences, Nizamabad, Dr R K Purohit, is in touch with him. On his request, Das has administered his herbal medicine to two children — one of five years and another 13. "In three months, one has recorded 15% cure and the other 80%, by their own admission," says Das.

Significantly, a scientist of Indian origin from San Francisco, Saraswati, has her relative under his treatment. She is coaxing him to get in touch with people in the USA where "there are more cases of cerebral palsy", as they seek information about him from her, Das maintains.

Das, after the death of his vaidya father Yogeshwar Lal Das in 1984, improved the medicine by rigorous research over the next two years in keeping with the guidelines defined by his father.

"The medicine was for the cure of polio and cerebral palsy," he says, adding: "My personal efforts appeared to lead to nowhere as there was no patenting." He met the then Congress MP from Kishanganj, M J Akbar, a senior journalist, who informed the then Union welfare minister M L Fotedar to get his medicine tried by the ICMR ."My medicine is still under trial by the ICMR," he says.