Understanding COVID-19 pandemic - A comprehensive Ayurvedic perspective

Epidemics have not been new to India. Ayurveda being in the fore front of health care of those times, has recorded its valuable experiences of epidemics & termed them as Janapadodhwamsa or Maraka. It has vividly described their mechanism of Causation (Nidana), factors affecting severity and actions complicating illnesses their management and prevention. The present work uses the same model described in Samhitas which assert the superiority of host susceptibility (Nija) over External Agent/Virus (Agantuja) and uses the same principles in prevention; while adopting the Jwara model to explain and correlate with different stages of COVID 19. It proposes management guidelines using Ahara (Nutritional Principles) and Oushadha (Medication) for different stages and subsets of patients along with their potential complications and drug interactions, utilizing the principles of host factor modification (Dosha hara) and potential broad spectrum Anti-viral (Prativisha) as envisaged by Rasa Shastra. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institute of Transdisciplinary Health Sciences and Technology and World Ayurveda Foundation. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).