Indo-Swiss Ayurveda Foundation (ISA)

HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION

In the course of two far-reaching meetings in the autumn of 2008, Dr Simone Hunziker (SAMA¹ director and ASMTA² chair) set out her vision to Mrs Anita Das who, as head of the AYUSH3 Department at the Indian Health Ministry, was on an official visit to Geneva. Mrs Das brought together Dr Hunziker and Ambassador Swashpawan Singh, the then Representative of India’s Permanent Mission to the UNO at Geneva. These encounters began a process which drew in other personalities and sparked events and projects in both Switzerland and India. During his tenure at New Delhi, where constructive meetings were held from 2009 to 2011, the Swiss Ambassador Philippe Welti actively supported the creation of a Swiss model for the recognition of Ayurveda as a medical system in the West. In Geneva, Madame Dominique Chausse, active in setting up alternative finance models favouring sustainable development, oversaw work leading to the implementation of the initial projects in India. A leading Ayurveda institution, AVP, the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy Coimbatore Ltd in southern India, came in as part of the plan to share knowledge and means in a collaboration which treats all partners equally, in order to ensure the spatiotemporal adaptation of the Western model in a context of the strictest respect for traditional knowledge and values. More - A path towards Ayurveda (Biography of the Founding President) ¹ Swiss Ayurvedic Medical Academy sàrl, www.samayurveda.com ²Swiss Association for Ayurveda practitioners and therapists, www.asmta.ch ³AYUSH = Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy (Department for traditional medical systems in the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of the Government of India), www.karunadu.gov.in/ayush/index.