India Is Insuring AYUSH Healthcare: What Can Africa Learn?

For many years, debates about traditional, complementary and integrative medicine in Africa have centred on one major question: Who should regulate the practitioners?

That question is important, but my study of India’s healthcare system raises another equally important question: Who pays when patients choose traditional or complementary healthcare?

India’s experience with Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy—collectively known as AYUSH—provides an important lesson. India has moved beyond merely recognizing these systems and has progressively developed mechanisms through which qualifying AYUSH treatments can enter the health-insurance system. Private health insurance can also cover AYUSH treatment, subject to the particular policy and its conditions.

Recognition alone is not enough
A healthcare profession may be legally recognized, practitioners registered and clinics permitted to operate, yet patients may still finance consultations, medicines, investigations, therapies and procedures entirely out of pocket. This creates an important distinction between regulatory integration and financial integration.

Regulatory integration asks who is legally permitted to provide a healthcare service. Financial integration asks whether the healthcare financing system can pay for an eligible service when a patient needs it. India is increasingly addressing both questions.

AYUSH has entered India’s insurance architecture

India’s Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) has developed a formal framework within which AYUSH treatment can be recognized for health-insurance purposes. In January 2024, IRDAI issued specific guidelines concerning AYUSH coverage, followed by a broader contemporary health-insurance regulatory framework.

This does not mean that every insurance policy automatically pays for every Ayurveda, naturopathy or other AYUSH treatment. Coverage remains connected to the particular insurance product, eligible treatment, facility and policy requirements. Regulatory inclusion therefore does not mean unlimited contractual entitlement.

Private insurance matters too
Another lesson for Africa is that complementary healthcare insurance does not necessarily have to begin with government. Private insurers in India provide AYUSH benefits in specified health-insurance products, subject to policy terms and eligibility requirements.

Private insurers, employer schemes and supplementary insurance products in Africa could therefore pilot carefully defined complementary-health benefits before governments contemplate wider public coverage.

India has developed benchmark prices
In May 2026, India’s Ministry of Ayush published revised benchmark rates and additional procedures for insurance coverage involving Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and Yoga and Naturopathy. The framework applies to cashless, reimbursement and settlement of treatment-expenditure claims.

India is therefore addressing practical questions such as what treatment is being provided, how it should be classified, what it should cost, where it should be delivered, what standards facilities should meet and how insurance claims should be settled.

Accreditation can affect payment
The 2026 framework differentiates reimbursement according to factors including accreditation status, hospital type, geographical classification and ward entitlement. This is significant because insurance can become an instrument for improving quality.

Better standards can lead to accreditation, which may improve reimbursement arrangements. Healthcare facilities therefore gain an economic incentive to strengthen clinical governance, documentation, staffing, infection prevention and patient safety.

Even certain Ayurveda procedures enter the framework

The insurance schedules extend beyond simple consultations and herbal medicines and include specified Ayurveda procedural and surgical specialties such as Shalya, Shalakya and Prasuti Tantra & Stree Roga.

However, insurance coverage must never be confused with professional authority. The appropriate sequence is qualification, competency, lawful scope, appropriate facility, eligible procedure, insurance authorization and reimbursement. An insurer cannot confer a clinical scope that a practitioner does not otherwise possess.

Popularity alone should not determine insurance coverage

Traditional and complementary medicine is widely used across Africa, but popularity alone is not sufficient justification for spending limited insurance resources. Professional recognition should also not automatically result in reimbursement for every intervention used by a profession.

Professional recognition and scientific evidence are different questions. Insurance decisions should consider safety, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, appropriate indications and the ability to monitor outcomes.

Africa should not simply announce that traditional medicine is covered

A blanket declaration that traditional medicine is covered would be too vague. Policymakers would still have to determine whether coverage includes consultations, herbal medicines, acupuncture, naturopathic treatment, hydrotherapy, traditional bone setting, inpatient treatment or other services.

Different interventions involve different levels of evidence, risk, professional competency and cost. A responsible insurance framework should therefore determine coverage at the level of the defined healthcare service.

I propose an African insurance-readiness model

From my examination of India’s system, I propose the African TCIM Health Insurance Readiness Framework (ATHIRF). Before a traditional or complementary healthcare service becomes eligible for insurance, policymakers should examine the following domains:

Source: Constructed by the Author (2026).

Not everything has to enter insurance at once

Africa could adopt a three-level approach. A green category could contain interventions for which practitioners are regulated, treatments standardized, facilities appropriate, evidence adequate and tariffs established. These could qualify for insurance.

An amber category could contain promising interventions where regulation exists but evidence, coding or economic evaluation remains incomplete. These could enter controlled pilot programmes. A red category would include interventions where qualifications are uncertain, treatments cannot be standardized, evidence is inadequate or claims cannot reliably be audited.

Insurance could transform complementary healthcare in Africa

Insurance requirements could encourage healthcare professions to improve. If insurers demand proper clinical records, practitioners must document treatment. If insurers require recognized qualifications, professional education must improve. If reimbursement depends on licensed facilities, clinics must meet standards. If treatments require codes, professions must standardize terminology. If payment depends on evidence, researchers must produce evidence.

Insurance can therefore become a powerful instrument for professionalization, quality assurance and accountability.

But India also gives Africa a warning
India’s system is evolving rather than complete. Coverage written into an insurance policy does not automatically guarantee easy access. Claims can still be disputed, hospitals need adequate documentation, insurers must determine medical necessity, patients need to understand their benefits and fraud must be controlled.

Africa should therefore learn from both India’s achievements and its implementation difficulties.

From recognition to financial integration

The development of a healthcare profession does not end when government agrees to regulate it. A mature pathway runs from recognition to regulation, education and competency, scope of practice, facility standards, evidence, accreditation, treatment coding, standardized tariffs, insurance coverage, claims monitoring and clinical and economic outcomes.

India’s contemporary AYUSH insurance framework demonstrates how far this process can develop. Africa should study the model critically and adapt relevant principles to local health systems.

Africa should begin the conversation
African policymakers should begin asking whether properly regulated and evidence-supported traditional and complementary healthcare interventions can eventually participate in national and private health-insurance systems. The objective should not be to place every traditional therapy on an insurance list, nor should Africa imitate India blindly.

The objective should be to build an African model based on patient safety, evidence, professional competency, cultural relevance, affordability and financial sustainability.

Perhaps the next chapter in the development of traditional, complementary and integrative healthcare in Africa should therefore not simply ask, “Who regulates us?” We should also begin asking: “When properly regulated and supported by evidence, how can these healthcare services become part of the financial architecture of universal health coverage?”

About the Author
Prof. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu is a Ghanaian naturopathic academic, researcher and lawyer whose scholarly interests include naturopathy, health law, health policy, professional regulation and the development of traditional, complementary and integrative healthcare in Africa.

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