dr.hunziker@samayurveda.com

Dr S. Hunziker

MEDICAL DOCTOR | MD | NHP AYURVEDA MEDICINE

Secretary and OED director, Swiss Ayurvedic Medical Academy
Founding President, Indo-Swiss Ayurveda Foundation
Academic Chair, SwissMed School
Expert for Ayurveda, WHO 

Biography

Dr Simone Hunziker, a Swiss medical doctor, trained in naturopathy, homeopathy, psychotherapy, and since 2001 in Ayurveda, is practicing general and integrative medicine since 1996 till date. Between 1998 and 2003 she has been running a pioneering centre of integrative medicine in Lausanne. 

Convinced about the necessity for mankind to have access to a complete codified and time-tested medical system, approaching the human being as a whole for sustainable global health, she decides in 2001 to dedicate her life to the global spread of Ayurveda. Her vision is to back the international promotion of Ayurveda by the creation of a model for its institutionalisation as a medical system in Switzerland. The country offers a favourable legal context and highest standards in the fields of medicine and education.  

In 2004, she creates the first professional school for Ayurveda in Switzerland. Between 2009 and 2016, holding the mandate of the presidency of the Swiss Ayurveda Association, she plays a key role in the Swiss regulatory process for Ayurveda professions. 

Her interactions with the Indian government lead on one hand to the first International Delegates Meets with AYUSH1 in 2009 and 2010 in Delhi, for standard settings in the globalisation process, and on the other hand to the launching in 2011 of the first global online database for Ayurveda research articles previously published in scientific journals.  

As the Founding President of the Indo-Swiss Ayurveda Foundation (ISA) she promotes the Swiss regulatory model with the ISA team on the international stage since 2013.  

During Global Ayurveda Festival III, in January 2016 in Kozhikode Kerala, she presents the completed and implemented model to representatives of the Indian government and the international Ayurveda community.  

During World Ayurveda Congress in November 2016 in Kolkata, she is invited to introduce the Swiss model in three key note addresses (at the plenary session, and at the sessions with international delegates and pharmaceutical industry representatives). This earns her to be the first foreigner to receive the Pandit Shive Sharma Award for the promotion of Ayurveda, by the Indian Association for the Study of Asian Medicines (IASTAM), at the mythical Benares Hindu University in 2017, on recommendation of the Indian government.  

Since 2009 she is living between Switzerland and India. Inspired and supported by late P.R. Krishnakumar Varier, she dedicates her work to the creation and running of an ambitious training program in Ayurveda medicine launched in 2015, MedVaidya, at the cutting edge of integration of authentic traditional knowledge transfer, modern technologies, advanced didactics and integrative medicine. 

Since 2018 she is actively participating as a WHO expert and Rapporteur in the elaboration of reference documents for Ayurveda. In 2021 she became Co-Founder and Academic Chair of SwissMed School, dedicated to high level training in disciplines of traditional medicines for professionals around the world; since 2023, she is Co-Founder of Swiss Ayurvedic Medical Academy, Institute for Science, Tradition and Research in Ayurveda, having taken up the mandate of Secretary and OED director. 

Ministry of traditional systems of medicine in India (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy)