Research on Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Ayurveda Practice
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Impact is the remarkable influences on the existing system by forced invade of a new think as like-pandemic disease. This impact can be interpreted as positive, negative or neutral based on the sensible variables. It is an essential exercise to assess impact of serious illness in pandemic form for its negative and positive influence on the economy, society, public policy, preventive, promotive and curative health, quality of life, environment and to allocate research project for maximum benefit with minimum waste of funds and manpower. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a combination of procedures, methods, and tools used to evaluate the potential health effects of a policy, programmer or project. Using qualitative, quantitative and participatory techniques, HIA aims to produce recommendations that will help decision-makers and other stakeholders make choices about alternatives and improvements to prevent disease/injury and to actively promote health. Covid-19 pandemic has a significant remark in many areas which are reflected in Wikipedia. But its impact on Ayurveda practice and research is not found either in Wikipedia or another search engine in internet platform. Therefore, an attempt was taken to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic in Ayurveda practice & Research. Ayurveda is a live traditional system of health care with an unbreakable practice for 3000 years. Ayurveda gained importance in its own country where it was originated after the establishment of Department of AYUSH in 2003. Then National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) includes Ayurveda (one of the components of AYUSH) as alternative therapy option to integrate with western medicine to serve the people of India in better way in 2005. Ayurveda health care is more focussed after the establishment of AYUSH ministry in 2014. Central council of Research in Ayurveda Sciences (CCRAS) has also intensified the specific research-based programme and project and renamed its institute as specific system based to create more data on practice of Ayurveda & initiate research in 2016. Herbal medicine is used by 75%-80% of the world population, mainly in developing countries for primary health care. But only 6.9% of Indian population favoured AYUSH system of medicine as evident in NSSO survey in 2014. Many committees recommended that more awareness and research are required to popularize the system. Many patients prefer Ayurveda after dissatisfied or frustration with contemporary medicine, low cost of Ayurveda medicine in comparison to allopath, easy excess to Ayurveda physician, last option and less side effect. Moreover some patients choose Ayurveda primarily based on their personal experience and strong recommendation of other people. The Ayurveda diagnostic process is subjective and patient oriented, some of diagnostic tools such as Prakruti (Constitution) assessment and Nadi Parikshya (Pulse diagnosis) are also patient centric. The treatment always personalized and classified as Sodhana (Purificatory) and Samana (Palliative). The Sodhana therapy is also called as Panchakarma therapy or detox therapy where snehana (oleation) and swedana (Sweating) are preparatory therapy which need personal contact of panchakarma technician and Ayurveda physician. Ksharasutra, leech therapy and uttara vasti are para surgical procedures mostly practice in Ayurveda hospitals. The research in Ayurveda is academic research in post graduate centers and special research in Research centers. Some of the academia and Institutes have been conducting clinical trial, animal experiments and other research like Clinical epidemiology, Pharmaco epidemiology etc.,