In the name of herbal medicine

Abstract

In the quest for safe and cost effective medicines, as much as 65-80% of the world's population have resorted to herbal remedies of one system or another, often led by a wrong notion that things originating from ancient practices cannot have detrimental effect on health. There are evidences of use of potentially toxic or ineffective plant substances in the form of crude powder or extracts contained in already marketed products. Herbal medicines even contaminated with ingredients of modern medicines, pests, microbes and heavy metals are marketed for which drug regulatory authorities often are not fully equipped to deal with. There is an increasing amount of cross-practice. Indiscriminate prescribing and illegal sale-distribution of drugs by health professionals belonging to different traditional systems including traditional healers and quacks, which is on the rise.

In Nepal, there is no specific legislation to regulate the safety, efficacy, quality, sale-distribution, promotion and utilisation of herbal medicines belonging to traditional systems but quite a good amount of exercise has been done to formulate policies and guidelines on herbal medicines, especially in the line of integrating them with PHC services of the national health care system. There is an acute shortage of professional manpower on herbal medicines. There is also a great deficiency of evaluated information on their practical use. There is a need to look at the toxicity and efficacy of herbal remedies in the light of their past history, usefulness and extent of admixture with allopathic therapeutic agents and animal products.

In this article, an attempt has been made to characterise the situation with a view to facilitate identification of issues and approaches towards rationalisation of the sector.