India creates traditional medicine electronic encyclopaedia

Over 100 doctors of India’s 1000 year-old medical systems, such as Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha, are currently compiling a 30-million page electronic encyclopaedia. The encyclopaedia, known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, will contain information gleaned from the many ancient texts that exist. Using sophisticated coding software the texts will be translated from Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Persian and Tamil into English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish. The project, costing US$2 million, should be available later this year. It will provide access to a vast wealth of material for scholars and practitioners. Its main purpose, however, is to protect India from the patenting of ideas and medicines by other parties. In the past India has fought and won several costly battles to revoke the patents on such traditional medicines as Curcuma longa (turmeric), a wound-healing medicine, and Azadirachta indica (neem), an anti-fungal product. It is hoped that by translating the texts and making them publicly available materials deriving from Indian traditional knowledge will be not be granted patents.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news>, accessed February 21, 2006