Taking ahead the vision of the Hon’ble Prime Minister for inclusive, equitable, and culturally rooted development of tribal communities, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), Government of India, will organize India’s first National Capacity Building Programme for Tribal Healers on Strengthening Health Outreach in Tribal Areas on 16–17 January 2026 in Hyderabad, Telangana. The programme represents a first-of-its-kind national initiative to formally recognize, capacitate, and integrate tribal and indigenous healers as trusted community-level partners within India’s public health ecosystem.

The event will be graced by Shri Jual Oram, Hon’ble Minister for Tribal Affairs, and Shri Durgadas Uikey, Hon’ble Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, and Smt. Ranjana Chopra, Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, along with senior officials from partner ministries and institutions, reflecting the Government of India’s highest-level commitment to advancing inclusive, culturally sensitive, and evidence-based tribal health interventions.

A major highlight of the programme will be the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the ICMR–Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Bhubaneswar, for the establishment of India’s first National Tribal Health Observatory – the Bharat Tribal Health Observatory (B-THO) under Project DRISTI. This landmark collaboration will institutionalize tribe-disaggregated health surveillance, implementation research, and research-driven disease elimination initiatives in tribal districts, addressing a long-standing national gap in tribal-specific health data, analytics, and policy evidence.

Over the years, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has emerged as a key nodal ministry in advancing tribal health outcomes through focused interventions such as the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission, strengthened convergence with national programmes for tuberculosis, leprosy, and malaria, expansion of health infrastructure in tribal areas, and flagship initiatives including the Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Maha Nyaya Abhiyan (PM JANMAN) and Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA). These sustained efforts have positioned the Ministry at the forefront of addressing health inequities in tribal and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) regions.

The capacity-building programme is being organized with strong technical and knowledge partnerships involving leading national and international institutions, including the Indian Council of Medical Research, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (New Delhi and  Jodhpur), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of AYUSH, and World Health Organization. These collaborations will bring global evidence, national best practices, and scientific rigour to structured engagement with tribal healers.

The MoU with ICMR–RMRC will facilitate the development of a secure digital tribal health surveillance platform featuring dashboards, GIS-enabled analytics, and periodic tribal health outputs. It will also enable the rollout of the Bharat Tribal Family Health Survey (BTFHS) and disease-specific implementation research aligned with national programmes such as the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) and the National Centre for Vector Borne Diseases Control (NCVBDC). In addition, the collaboration will support capacity building of state and district health systems, along with sensitization- and referral-oriented training of tribal healers.

Taken together, the national capacity-building programme and the MoU signing mark a significant and unprecedented step in tribal development. Moving beyond documentation of traditional knowledge, the initiative focuses on structured capacity building, ethical safeguards, institutional linkages, and data-driven action. It underscores the Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ commitment to fostering synergy between indigenous knowledge systems and modern public health frameworks, with the objective of delivering sustainable health outcomes in the country’s most underserved tribal regions.

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