AYUSH system of medicine useful in management of COVID-19: Health ministry

Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said guidelines for registered practitioners of respective system of AYUSH have been prepared by director generals of research councils and directors of national institutes with their team of experts and vetted by the Interdisciplinary AYUSH Research and Development Task Force of the Ministry of AYUSH. The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) is purposed with developing education, research and propagation of indigenous alternative medicine systems in India. "After obtaining approval of Cabinet Secretariat, these vetted guidelines are made available in public domain for the benefit of more than 7,00,000 registered AYUSH practitioners to help in the management of COVID-19 pandemic uniformly," he said, noting that the AYUSH system of medicine is useful in management of the pandemic.

Responding to another question, Vardhan said the AYUSH ministry has formed an interdisciplinary research and development task force. "The task force has formulated and designed clinical research protocols for prophylactic studies and add-on interventions in COVID-19 positive cases through thorough review and consultative process of experts of high repute from different organisations across the country for studying four different interventions, namely, 'Ashwagandha', 'Yashtimadhu', 'Guduchi' plus 'Pippali' and a poly herbal formulation (AYUSH-64)," he said. The health minister said Ayush Sanjivani mobile application developed by the AYUSH ministry has also been launched to generate data on acceptance and usage of AYUSH advocacies and measures among the population and its impact in prevention of COVID-19, targeting 5 million population. "All these studies are at various stages of conduction. Further, a total of 247 proposals of Ayurveda interventions have been received under modified Extra-Mural Research (EMR) scheme for SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 disease," he said.

"Out of 247 proposals, 21 research proposals recommended by competent authority on Ayurveda for SARS/COVID cases have been approved for funding," Vardhan added.