He was speaking at the presentation ceremony of the Rameshwar Birla National Awards at the Bombay Hospital Institute of Medical Sciences. While the award for 1996 went to eminent paediatrician Dr Prabhakar Udani, that for 1998 went to Dr V Balasubramaniam, a neurosurgeon at Chennai.

Singh said modern medicine is highly expensive and therefore, it is important that alternative medicine like ayurveda and naturopathy should be explored. He said there are 73,000 villages in MP, and in most cases, quacks provide treatment as doctors do not want to go to there. However, the MP Government decided to to train these quacks, and educated persons in every village was selected and sent for a six-month training programme, he said. At least 20,000 persons have been trained in this manner so far, he said.

In yet another healthscheme started by the MP Government, delivery skills of the local village dais were upgraded so they could conduct safe deliveries. Before this, the dais were using arrows to cut the umbilical cord, he said.

Earlier, the awards were presented to the two doctors by Singh in a well-attended ceremony. Dr Udani has done pioneering work, teaching and research in the area of child health with special reference to neurotuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases and community and social paediatrics. Dr Balasubramaniam has done pioneering work in the filed of brain surgery, utilising the field of stereotaxic surgery.

The CM said the he would be happy to give land at Panchmarhi for a naturopathy centre on the lines of the one at Lonavla being started by the Bombay Hospital Trust.

Most tribal areas in our country have their own systems of medicine, like a tribe in MP that has its own unique kada for the treatment of malaria, he pointed out.