Challenges and opportunities for traditional herbal medicine today with special reference to its status in India

As per the definition approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), the term herbal medicine applies to all those medicines that occur in the form of plants, plant parts (such as roots, rhizomes, stem, bark, wood, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds or their active ingredients), herbal preparations, or the finished products containing these materials singly or in combinations. The major strengths of herbal medicine include absence of adverse side effects in general, long-lasting curative impact and, sometimes, cost-effectiveness. However, duration of treatment is relatively long and, in some cases, herbal drugs may react with modern medicine, if taken together. The cause of herbal medicine is currently suffering from (a) decline in species richness, (b) negligence towards plant systematics in higher education, (c) lack of cultivation practices and agro-technology for majority of medicinal and aromatic plants, (d) little financial support for research in conservation biology, (e) and shortage of sophisticated research facilities for quality control. Immediate steps required to be taken for protection and promotion of herbal medicine include (a) in situ and ex situ conservation of the fast-dwindling wealth of medicinal plants; (b) their large-scale cultivation, possibly under buy-back agreement with farmers; (c) authentication and characterization of medicinal plant species based on scientific parameters; (d) standardization and quality control of herbal products under preparation, and (e) generation of data on clinical evidence for efficacy and safety of herbal drugs. All these aspects are discussed in this review with special emphasis on the status and scope of traditional herbal medicine in the Indian sub-continent.