Sri Lanka has its own indigenous scheme oftraditional medicine which is calledhela wedakama. The practice is not associated withayurveda.[1][2] This system has been practised for thousands of years. On the other hand, the Sri Lankanhela wedakama tradition is a mixture ofSinhala traditional medicine,mainland āyurveda andSiddha systems ofIndia,Unani medicine ofGreece through theArabs, and most importantly, theDesheeya Chikitsa, which is the indigenous medicine of Sri Lanka. College teaching of these systems began in 1929 at what is now theInstitute of Indigenous Medicine of theUniversity of Colombo. TheSiddha Medicine Unit moved to theUniversity of Jaffna in 1984.[3]
