AYURVEDA

An Age-old Indian Intellectual Property in Management of COVID-19

- Dr. Sanjib Kr Paul

Ayurveda is one of the oldest healing sciences of the planet that practices holistic principles primarily focused on personalized health. Ayurvedic knowledge stems from the ancient Vedic culture and was taught for many thousands of years in an oral tradition from accomplished masters to their disciples. Some of this knowledge was set to print a few thousand years ago and became a partially documented long-tested age-old intellectual property of India in the form of traditional knowledge.

Ayurvedic medicines contain active therapeutic formulations, which are used as person-centered medicine.

It emphasizes on sequentially healthy lifestyle, health promotion and sustenance, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. So, substantial similarities between the ancient strategy of Ayurveda and the modern approach of predictive, preventive and personalized medicine (PPPM), which is considered by The Horizon 2020 initiative of the European Union as the hardcore of its strategy, can be clearly observed.

The scientific value of basic principles of Ayurveda like Prakriti is being studied in context to biology and genomics and researchers reported various valid outcomes.

Looking into its very limited contraindications and holistic system of health care since thousands of years, many countries in the world especially Germany, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, United States have established institutions where Ayurveda is practiced with respect to traditions and high professional competence.

Though there is no doubt about the holistic healing nature of Ayurvedic system, but sometimes there are certain concerns being raised by global community due to insufficient validation of certain processes and formulations with modern methods.