Union Minister Ashwini Choubey on Saturday attested to the significance of cow urine in the health sciences, saying that it can be used to treat serious ailments that have long baffled medical practitioners.

"Several medicines, including those used to treat cancer, are prepared using cow urine. The centre is also working on this under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana," he was heard telling reporters at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, in a video released by news agency ANI. Mr Choubey, who is the Minister of State for Health, also said that every effort was being made to protect cattle through proper implementation of government schemes.

The Ayushman Bharat Yojana is a centrally sponsored scheme aimed at making interventions in primary, secondary and tertiary care systems to address issues surrounding healthcare in a holistic fashion. It was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.

Late last month, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat made headlines by claiming at a function in Dehradun that the cow is the only animal capable of exhaling oxygen. Experts debunked his theory by pointing that all creatures -- including humans -- exhale oxygen in small proportions while breathing. They, however, had a bigger problem with Mr Rawat's second claim that living in proximity to cows can cure tuberculosis.