New Delhi: Dr. N. Zaheer Ahmed took over as Director General, Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine (CCRUM), Ministry of Ayush, Government of India. Previously working as the Deputy Director of CCRUM’s Regional Research Institute of Unani Medicine, Chennai, he is a renowned researcher and brings with him more than three decades of research and administrative experience.
Dr. Zaheer has a broad vision for the development and promotion of Unani medicine. During his first interaction as Director General with the CCRUM officials, he said that our goal should be to take CCRUM and Unani Medicine to new heights. With more than 30 years of career at a CCRUM institute and remarkable contributions in the area of research and development, he is already well-acquainted with and has first-hand experience of the overall functioning of the CCRUM. The CCRUM looks forward to his leadership for better and faster development and progression of research in Unani medicine.
A Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) (Unani Medicine) from the National Institute of Unani Medicine, Bangalore, he has been actively engaged in clinical research and has carried out various IMR, EMR, in-house, and collaborative clinical and pre-clinical studies as principal investigator and co-investigator. He has about 90 publications to his credit.
CCRUM is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Ayush, Government of India. Since its establishment in 1978, the CCRUM as the apex government organization for research in Unani Medicine has been engaged in conducting scientific research on the applied as well as fundamental aspects of the Unani system of medicine. Consequently, over the past four decades of its existence, the Council has made significant strides in clinical research, drug standardization, survey and cultivation of medicinal plants, ethnobotanical surveys have been conducted in different forest areas of 14 states collecting over 1 lakhs specimens of medicinal plants. Database of 9,500 Medicinal Folk claims have also been documented and published in 19 volumes of Books. Experimental and field scale cultivation of 38 important medicinal plants used in the Unani system of medicine has also been undertaken. Besides survey, units are maintaining 329 Medicinal Plants for its conservation and demonstration purpose in Herbal Gardens.
With the efforts of the scientists and technical manpower at its 23 research centres spread across the country, the Council has won appreciation from various quarters for its patents which are 17 in number, innovative research outcomes, and scientific publications.
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