Ayurveda, an ancient science of life in world, has holistic approach in prevention and management of diseases, broadly classified as communicable and non communicable, depending upon their mode of transmission. Various terms like Janapadodhwansha (Charaka), Maraka (Sushruta) and Janamar (Bhela) have been used to describe the disease epidemic in Ayurveda and communicable diseases have been separately described as Aupasargika Roga.Interactions among agent, host and environment is responsible for emergence of infectious diseases. An infection is manifested only if agent is able to overcome the host immunity under favorable environment. Sushruta opines that without involvement of factors like Ritu (suitable season or time), Beeja (seed), Kshetra (field), and Ambu (water) neither a plant nor a fetus can germinate and grow. Same principle can be applied to development of infectious diseases. Among these four factors, suitability of Kshetra (human body) is especially important in the context of infectious diseases along with Beeja (infective agent), Ritu (opportune time allowing the optimal growth of the pathogen) and Ambu (nutritional factors favoring the pathogens). Ayurveda advocates various preventive measures like avoiding prasanga (mutual contact) and gatrasansparsha (touching) to break the chain of transmission of infective agents and rasayana (rejuvenative therapy) and panchakarma (purification procedures) to promote the kshetra.Although communicable diseases have been controlled to a large extent with the help of modern preventive measures like vaccination a continued re- emergence of newer infective diseases has made it necessary to re-look the measures of prevention. There is an urgent need to complement them with the traditional knowledge, such as use of the ancient preventive measures and health-promotive measures like rasayana. This paper is intended to describe various methods of infection prevention described in Ayurveda texts and discusses their relevance in current scenario.
Key words: Aupasargika Roga, Communicable Disease, Maraka, Janamara, Janapadodhwansha, Prevention,Sutika,Shana Tyaga
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