Third-World
countries have unanimously agreed to jointly tap their potential
in herbal and medicinal plants. India, one of the largest producers
of herbal drugs, has agreed to help a number of developing and
under-developed countries in the exploitation of their vast resources
in herbs and traditional medicine. This emerged at the end of
a workshop held here alongside the General Conference of the Third-World
Academy of Sciences, over the weekend.
The
workshop chalked out strategies for optimal utilisation of herbs
and medicinal plants in meeting the health-care needs of the third-world
countries. It also identified a number of areas where mutually
beneficial collaborative projects could be initiated among them.
The workshop organised by the National Botanical Research Institute,
Lucknow, in association with the Centre for Science and Technology
of Non-aligned and other Developing Countries, provided a useful
platform for the scientists of the third-world nations interested
in traditional medicine and natural products to exchange views
and experiences.
Eighty
percent of world’s population comprising 4.5 billion people particularly
from the third world who are unable to afford modern medicines,
still rely on plant-based medicines and herbal drugs. According
to WHO, 20,000 medicinal plant species are still used by
the people of the third world nations for health-care. Plant-based
drugs, which found formidable opposition in the advent of modern
medicines, started finding a renewed interest, worldwide especially
from the developed nations towards the end of the 20th
century. Medically useful compounds isolated from these herbs
and plants with specific biological activity were developed into
a number of modern drugs. The synergic action of compound complexes
found in polyherbal formulations of many traditional medicines
are observed to be safer, effective as well as cheap. This was
one of the reasons for renewed interest in herbal drugs.
The
global market for herbal drugs and herbal health products was
of the order of over 85 billion dollars in 2001. A major share
of 80 percent of it, was bagged by countries like China followed
by Japan. Most of the bio-diversity rich India and third-world
nations had only a poor share in this ever-growing market.
The
workshop thus underscored the urgent need in the third world,
to build up their research and development capacity in plant medicines,
not only to tap the world market, but also for their own health
care needs.
