Traditional and complementary medicines: Quality assessment strategies and safe usage.

Abstract

Herbal medicines are also known as herbal remedies, herbal medicinal products, phytopharmaceuticals, phytotherapeutic agents and phytomedicines. Herbal medicines represent a vast array of therapies with proven benefits for the prevention and cure of different ailments. Nowadays, herbal medicines are being used along with modern medicine in many countries and this combination is playing an important role in health care. The increase in the popularity of herbal remedies is due to increase in the cost of treatment with modern medicine, fear of side effects of modern drugs and appreciation of natural remedies, which represent the alternative healthcare movement. More than 80% of the population within developing countries relies on the use of herbal and other traditional medicines for their primary health care due to their lower cost and time‐tested nature [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) also encourages, recommends and promotes the use of traditional and herbal remedies in the National Health Care Program because these medicines are easily available at low cost, are comparatively safe and people have faith in such remedies [2]. The actual global market size of herbal products is difficult to assess as the sale of herbal medicines is not regulated and that is why accurate statistics are not available. Until 1988, only 14 member countries of the WHO regulated the sales of herbal products and since then, 53 countries were added to the list, with another 42 in the process of developing regulations by 2003 [3]. According to the WHO, 75% of the world’s population has therapeutic experience with herbal products [4]. According to a survey conducted in 2004, more than one third of American adults use alternative medicine [3] and this consumer‐driven movement has expanded the market significantly in the United States (USA). The worldwide sale of the medicinal plants, crude extracts and finished products equated to 15 billion US dollars in 1999 [5], which increased to 32 billion US dollars in 2002 [6]. According to the World Bank projection, with annual increases of 5 to 15%, the current market size of herbal products is about 60 billion US dollars per year [3]. Maintaining quality of herbal products is challenging and it includes a strict set of processes which help to maintain consistency within the specified limits. In this article, we summarize the potential of natural flora in development of evidence based herbal medicines, various quality control strategies and role of retail pharmacist for their safe usage.