86% people in India following AYUSH guidelines: Official

About 86 per cent people in the country are following one or the other AYUSH guideline, a senior ministry official said on Friday.

Addressing the ASSOCHAM Foundation Week 2020, AYUSH Ministry Secretary Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha said through the Ayush Sanjeevani mobile application, the ministry has received a data set of 1.47 crore people.

"We found 86 per cent people are following one or the other AYUSH guideline whether it is kada or haldi milk...homeopathy. Of this data set, about 15,000 people reported that they contracted Covid-19, one-third said they were not using the Ayush modalities while two-thirds reported that they used the Ayush modalities," he said.

Kotecha said a further evaluation revealed that most of those who had contracted the disease and were using the Ayush modalities did not have severe implications. They were either asymptomatic or mild cases of Covid-19.

"People who have not used these modalities have reported that they had to suffer a lot. It (the AYUSH analysis) was a large-scale assessment, a social study and not a clinical study, which showed that there is a large-scale acceptance of the Ayush modalities," he added.

In May, the Ministry of AYUSH had issued self-care guidelines as preventive health measures for boosting immunity, with a special reference to respiratory health amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Kotecha further said over 104 studies have been conducted by the ministry at 135 locations across the country.

"A lot of these studies are finished, we have a lot of leads and we will be publishing those in reputed journals," he said.

Speaking at the event, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs Naval Jit Kapoor said tribal areas and tribals were not much affected by Covid-19.

"We were very worried that if Covid-19 spreads to tribal areas, what will we do, because firstly these are remote areas and medical facilities are also not that good there. Through the website, Prakriti, developed by IIT Delhi, we found that in 177 tribal-dominated districts, the percentage of Covid-19 cases vis-a-vis other population was three.

"We had discussions with various states and all of them said the tribal areas and tribals were not much affected by Covid-19, only those who had gone to cities had carried the infection back with them, but the tribal way of life is such that they were not affected by Covid-19," he said.

Kapoor said the ministry is validating the knowledge of tribal healers.

"The indigenous knowledge of tribals was earlier ignored. Unfortunately, neither in allopathy nor in ayurveda have they become a part. We are now validating these tribal healers with the QCI (Quality Council of India) and other organisations so that their knowledge is brought into the mainstream," he said.