Accepted for/Published in: JMIRx Med
Date Submitted: Nov 12, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 9, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 4, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Utilization of AYUSH Advocacies and Measures in the Indian Population for the Prevention of COVID 19: Insights from a Mobile Application
ABSTRACT
Background:
India follows a pluralistic system for strategic and focused health care delivery, where the traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa, and Homoeopathy co-exist with Contemporary medicine and functions under the Ministry of AYUSH (MoA). The MoA had developed a mobile application - AYUSH Sanjivani, to document the trends of the utilization of AYUSH based traditional and holistic measures by the public across India. The assessment of data generated through this app would help monitor the extent of the utilization of AYUSH measures for primary prevention and would aid in effective health promotion/communication efforts solely focused on targeted health care delivery in the time of the pandemic.
Objective:
The purpose of the study was to determine the extent of utilization of AYUSH advocacies and measures by the public in the prevention of COVID 19, as reported through the mobile app; “AYUSH Sanjivani”.
Methods:
Cross-sectional analysis of the data, generated through the AYUSH Sanjivani app from 4th May 2020 to 31st July 2020 was done to study the pattern and extend of the utilization of AYUSH-based measures by the public. The responses of respondents in terms of demographic profile, utilization pattern, benefits obtained, the association between the use of AYUSH based measures and incidence of COVID-19, symptomatic status, and also between duration of use of AYUSH based measures were evaluated based on the bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis.
Results:
Among the data of 723459 respondents, 85.1% reported utilizing AYUSH measures for prevention of COVID-19, out of which 89.8% reported to have benefitted from it. Improvement in parameters of general well-being was reported by 63.4% of the users. Respondents who were using AYUSH based measures for less than 30 days were more likely to be COVID positive (Odds-ratio 1.52(95% CI 1.44 -1.60)). The odds of non-users of AYUSH based measures being symptomatic, if they are tested positive is more compared to users (Odds-ratio 4.01(95% CI 3.61 - 4.59)).
Conclusions:
The findings of this cross-sectional analysis assert that a good proportion of the representative population has practiced AYUSH measures, across different geo-locations of the country, during the COVID pandemic and have benefitted considerably in terms of general well being and reduced incidence of COVID 19.
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