PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS CAUSED BY ‘VITAMINA’DEFICIENCY- AN AYURVEDIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Blindness comes with devastating physical condition and deep socio-economic implications. Approximately 45 million people in the world are blind and another 135 million people are deemed to be visually disabled by 2020. ‘Vitamin A’ deficiency alone accounts for 6% among the causes of blindness. It is the chief cause of Childhood Blindness in developing countries. As a step towards prevention of blindness, the ‘National Programme for Control of Blindness’recommends a single massive dose of 2,00,000IU of ‘vitamin A’ orally every 6 months to preschool children and half the dose to children between 6 months to 1year of age. But, these ‘retinol form’prophylactic supplements in excess may lead to toxicity causing acute and chronic symptoms, birth defects and even death. Ayurveda as a science has an equal responsibility in protecting ‘right to sight’ of each individual. Though the classical references does notdirectly mention about the daily dose of the nutrients, all the drugs mentioned as chakshushya, such asGarjara, Karavellaka, Draksha, Shigru, Paalankikaetc do contain a large amount of ‘vitamin A’ in them. Hence an attempt has been made in this article to quantify these classical chakshushyadravyafor daily recommended need of ‘vitamin A’ to every individual.