Reeling under the Covid-19 pandemic, India has turned towards its traditional medicines as on add-on intervention to see if it works against deadly contagion which has killed lakhs across the world.
On Thursday, the Ayush, Health and Science and Technologies Ministries joined hands to kick-start a clinical trial of traditional medicines based on herbs like Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu, Guduchu Pippali on workers and those working in high-risk areas.
Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the study will draw a comparison between the impact of Hydroxychloroquine and Ashwagandha for the prophylaxes against SARS-COV-2 in the health care providers with increased risk during the Covid-19 outbreak.
It will also include the effectiveness of ayurveda formulation as an adjunct to ‘Standard of Care’ for the treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19. A randomized, open-label, parallel efficacy, active control, multi-centre exploratory drug trial will take place, he said.
The population-based interventional studies on the impact of Ayush based prophylactic interventions will be carried out through four research councils under the Ayush Ministry and national institutes in 25 states across the country and several state governments covering approximately 5 lakhs population.
Union Ayush Minister Shripad Naik said that his Ministry is also studying the impact of Ayush advocacies and Ayush measures for prevention of COVID 19 among the population.
The Union Health Minister said that the Ayush Sanjivani mobile app developed by Ministry of AYUSH will be useful to generate data on acceptance and usage of AYUSH advocacies and measures among the population and its impact in prevention of COVID 19.
Sanchit Sharma, Executive Director at AIMIL Pharma which is engaged in production of herbal products like Fifatrol and BGR-34(developed with the help of government scientific research body, CSIR) welcomed the move asserting that many Indian herbs are already known for their immunity-enhancing property as well as managing various diseases.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi too have been at various platforms exhorting the use of Indian Traditional medicines to tackle the Covid-19 which has claimed over 1,700 lives in the country.
The Government is also launching Ayush Sanjivani application based study for impact assessment of acceptance and usage of Ayush advisories in its role in prevention of COVID 19 for generating data of large population with a target of 5 million people.