Herbal medicine is still the mainstay of about 75 – 80%of the world population, mainly in the developing countries, for primary health care. This is primarily because of the general belief that herbal drugs are without any side effects besides being cheap and locally available.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the use of herbal remedies throughout the world exceeds that of conventional drugs by two to three times. The use of plants for healing purposes predates human history and forms the origin of much modern medicine.
Many conventional drugs originated from plant sources: a century ago, most of the few effective drugs were plant-based. Examples include aspirin (willow bark), dioxin (from foxglove), quinine (from cinchona bark), and morphine (from the opium poppy).[user_id]
Herbal products were discarded from conventional medical use in the mid 20th century, not necessarily because they were ineffective but because they were not as economically profitable as the newer synthetic drugs. In the early 19th century, scientific methods become more advanced and preferred, and the practice of botanical healing was dismissed as quackery.
However, there is a resurgence in the use of plant medicine and the market size is expected to grow in the coming years. This was buttress by the recent statement by the Deputy Director Of Centre For Plant Medicine Research in the person of Dr. Appiah Alfred Ampomah.
In an interview with rafamallgh, he explained, if we can take herbal medicine seriously as a country, it could generate more revenues than both cocoa and gold” He added, cocoa is only one cash crop, unlike herbal medicine which has many important medicinal plants in the likes of Cryptolepis sanguinolenta, Khaya senegalensis et al.
He emphasized that our medicinal plants could be processed into finished products for export rather than exporting in their raw state in the case of cocoa and that could fetch us more revenues.
Therefore, the government and corporate institutions should endeavor to invest and give attention to the industry and help promote the industry
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Quiroz, D., Towns, A., Legba, S. I., Swier, J., Brière, S., Sosef, M., & van Andel, T. (2014). Quantifying the domestic market in herbal medicine in Benin, West Africa. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 151(3), 1100-1108.
