Balendu Prakash

Vaidya Balendu Prakash (14 March 1959 – 7 August 2026) was an Indian Ayurveda practitioner. He was a physician to the President of India and the founder of Paadav, a specialty Ayurvedic hospital in Dehradun. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri in 1999.

Life and career Balendu Prakash was born on 14 March 1959, at Meerut, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to Vaidya Chandra Prakash, an Ayurveda practitioner. In 1989, he moved his base to Dehradun and founded Vaidya Chandra Prakash Cancer Research Foundation (SIROs) for ayurvedic research. He had published several articles in alternative medicine research journals about his findings, covering the treatment of cancer and other diseases. In 2000, when he set up a research unit at the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, he found it difficult to get patient referrals from medical doctors of the centre. It was also reported that a team of British medical doctors scrutinised Prakash's treatment and his patients in 1990, only to report negatively about the therapeutic efficacy of the treatment. He had sat in the Central Council of Indian Medicine and headed the Clinical Research Units of Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram and Shri Dhanvantri Ayurvedic College and Hospital, Chandigarh during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Selected bibliography