08/06/2020 - Health

IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· The Ayush ministry, listed many Ayush formulations as preventives, prophylactics, standalone and add-on symptom management interventions, with claims that many of these have anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, even anti-influenza effects.

· However, Ayush interests will be served far better if the government were to push for concerted research on this, with the gold standard of clinical trial.

· The government even set up a task force to oversee Ayush research in the country. However, there are certain gaps that could undermine the endeavour, and traditional medicine could be back at square one.

· The guidelines have loopholes that can be manipulated to dress research findings—or question robustness of the study—depending on how sceptical one is of traditional medicine.

· For instance, the “desired” inclusion criteria for trials allow the inclusion of subjects aged between 18 and 60 years, leaving out the elderly, among whom Covid-19 disease complication and mortality rates are the highest across age cohorts.

· The guidelines also recommend excluding subjects with pre-existing co-morbidities. Of 60 trials that a search on the website of the Clinical Trials Registry of India (CTRI) yielded with the search term ‘Covid-19’, 23 were Ayush-related; over half of these were non-randomised, and none have begun recruiting yet.

· Also, while the CDSCO recognises Ayurvedic medicine as those that conform to the classical texts, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 recognises only 54, 31 and 14 texts as “authoritative books” on ayurveda, siddha and unani; a large number of Ayush formulations outside these texts will be considered non-standard, hobbling research on these.

· And, with non-standard formulations will come the attendant problem of non-disclosure, especially in cases of proprietary medicine, and a suitable placebo or control would be hard to design.

· To push Ayush, the government must take a cue from China’s efforts on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)—invest heavily to become an R&D leader itself and help design research protocols that have acceptance across systems of medicine. Perhaps, then, Ayush might get the boost that Tu Youyou’s medicine Nobel meant for TCM.

Aradhana Tiwari 5 years

COVID-19 teaches the hard lessons that every country must have a competent system of medicine closely linked with research and development, because human health can only improve through innovation.

AYUSH(Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy)- a system of alternative medicine, a form of "natural therapy"- claims to treat diseases for which allopathy, or Western medicine, currently offers no cure.

"Any claims made should be backed by data and evidence" and therefore, govt needs to invest heavily in R&D and design research protocols to bolster its credibility- for its acceptance across systems of medicine.

>>> How govt will bolster Ayush credibility ?

- Taking COVID-19 as an opportunity, R&D in the field of AYUSH system in different areas such as "drug development" including- quality assurance, pre-clinical safety evaluation and clinical research needs to be conducted comprehensively.

- Further, "research support" needs to be extended through grant in the area of traditional medicine.

- Develop "directives on research

practices" for uniform adoption across all

stakeholders such as research councils, academic institutes, funding agencies.

- Set up a "Task force" to oversee Ayush research in the country and to rectify loopholes if any.

- Govt must take a cue from China’s efforts on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)—in their fight againt coronavirus.

>>> Conclusion :

Even if AYUSH is issued across the system of medicine- as a preventive measure to build up immunity and not a cure an unseen enemy, it can work then also.