The New Nation - Internet Edition

Hakim Mohammed Said

In developing countries, remedies prepared by a traditional healer from plants of the local flora are available for majority of the people. Although bulk of synthetic preparations and chemical drugs are available as proprietary and prescription products with high price, there are millions of people in all walks of life in these countries, who have faith only in the Traditional System of Medicine and this trend is growing. They think that it is a safe and dependable system because it have evolved, developed and perfected in our own communities and areas, and has been tried over a period of thousand years with uniform results, under our own climatic and living condition. This trend has also taken its current ascent due to the toxic and adverse reactions of synthetic and chemical medicines being observed round the globe. There are available data as regards the therapeutic efficacy of modern drugs which the experts feel are not applicable to our conditions especially to the South Asian and Pacific Regions.

In Bangladesh, there are several thousand traditional healers of whom many are practising in rural areas. They practice the traditional system of medicine, dispensing mostly herbal remedies and well over 60% of the country's population attend their clinics.

A correct approach to investigation of such plants would therefore be for trained physicians and pharmacologists to cooperate with healers, first acting as observers by establishing proper diagnosis and evaluating whether the treatment given by the healer is likely to be effective. In this way a number of plants might be selected, extracts of which could then be subjected to more detailed clinical trials, provided that the preliminary observations and a reasonable extensive toxicological evaluation have shown an acceptable therapeutic ratio. Further investigation of these plants could then be performed in the laboratory.

Identification of Problems Regarding Development of Medicinal Plants in Bangladesh

* Despite the fact that a large proportion of the country's population (mostly in rural and remote areas) depend upon curative properties of medicinal herbs, little or no attention has been given to the development of this resource in the past.

* Medicinal plants of indigenous origin as well as imported species are now increasingly being used in hoth raw and semi-processed forms as medicines in Greco-Arab (Unani) System. Herbal wings of multinational and national pharmaceuticals are also contributing at large in utilisation of indigenous herbal wealth.

* Although there are different areas of vegetation in Bangladesh with their distinctive agricultural products such as rice, sugarcane, jute, leguminous plants, etc. and commercially valuable trees, there is no proper methodology adopted as yet regarding dissemination of existing knowledge on state of natural occurrence of medicinal plants. There is no organised body for dissemination of ethnobotanical and scientific information in the country.

* The scope of cultivation of medicinal plants has not been clearly defined to the farmers. Therefore they lack awareness of the economic benefits. Procurement, use and preparation in herbal formulations. This fact adds much towards restriction of regular apply of required crude drugs in time to the users or to the market.

* No attention has so far been paid to the propagation and harvesting of medicinal plants in the management plans prepared by forest departments of the different zones. No proper emphasis has been given to cultivation of medicinal plants of areas that are vulnerable to droughts or to heavy floods. This has led to the fear of extinction regarding several species.

Please allow me to quote hereunder from one of my presentations at Vienna meeting: "Only the industrial development concerns have ultra modern equipments regarding analysis on medicinal plants. No research based manufacturing organisation has facilities of sophisticated insolation, phytochemical screening and identification or equipments for analysing principal active ingredients."

As regards the phytochemical data in Pakistan, H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry at the University of Karachi enjoys the facility of computer data link but it does not deal with taxonomic and pharmacognostic attributes for identification.

The Institute of Clinical Pharmacology established under Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) Pakistan has started pre-clinical and clinical experiments on herbal crude drugs and on compound formulations including pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, pharmacodynamics and toxicology. Obviously, this shall result in standard advancement of the largest herbal manufacturing house in the country. Being an establishment of academic nature the institute also aims at providing national assistance to herbal medicinal manufacturers and shall become a part of the Hamdard University in the future. It shall help in establishing the efficacy of herbs and herbal formulations as well as safety and toxicity.

Source and Use of Medicinal Plants Material for Industry and Industrial Projections: Pharmaceutical Preparations comprising herb or their parts including those of bacterial and fungal origin contribute to over 60% of all preparations used for man and stock. However, we observe in most traditional pharmacopoeias, a measurable decline in the number of medicinal plants and their preparations in proportion to the increase in synthetic substances. This can be explained by changes in the ways in which medicinal plants and their products are being used. The raw materials can be categorised as: (i) raw plant material, e.g. leaves, roots, fruits, seeds, resins, gums etc., (ii) pulverized and semi-processed plant materials in the form of powders, ashes etc .. (iii) infusions, decoctions, extracts, etc.

Besides the use of raw materials and purified natural substances, a growing number of refined plant extracts are now being used in naturopathic remedies. These remedies are an integral part of what today is called "Phytotherapy". It should be borne in mind that it is not necessary for the article components to be isolated structure be established for a plant extract to be article. Indeed, it is possible that structurally different compounds present in a crude extract may have 'synergistic effect' (which is reflected in case of compound formulations too). Thus there is great potential today like in the past for the industrial development of traditional herbal remedies and plant extracts for the prevention or treatment of diseases. Phytochemical complexity of these traditional remedies and the inherent biological variation makes it necessary but also very difficult to evaluate their safety, efficacy and quality. Problems associated with this phase of development in plant-based industry thus include:

(i) lack of comparative studies between synthetic and natural herbal drugs;

(ii) lack of involvement for betterment of this industry and as a whole government patent is weak for plant-derived drugs;

(iii) continuous and long term supply of herbal raw material is not assured:

(iv) the biological variation inherent in the raw material results in quantitative deviations as well as in qualitative terms;

(v) plant extracts are often difficult to dissolve in water and

consequently difficult to test in various bioassay systems:

(vi) lack of advanced knowledge of modern separation methods and highly sensitive screening methods for trace elements and other active components in complex mixtures: (vii) instability of the active (organic) compounds in biological preparations:

(viii) loss of biological activity during laborious screening and clinical experiments:

(ix) difficulty in determining the general pharmacological activity of plant materials which needs sophisticated equipments and well-organised infrastructure:

(xi) shortage of qualified pharmacologists and traditional healers having advanced knowledge of such procedures.

Search for pharmacologically active compounds from effective medicinal plants is a team work and involves the participation of taxonomists, pharmacologists, chemists, hakims and doctors. To make these categories precise, we aim to have a triumvirate of scientists, hakims and doctors - for cultivation, standardisation, phytochemical, pharmacological and clinical studies for better utilisation of existing resources available and for the improvement and industrial development of this natural wealth.

Proposals for Policy Formation Regarding Bangladesh Medical Plants and Crude Drugs

Under the consultation of UNIDO, National Commission of International Standards on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants be set up to evaluate the situation, develop plans and policies, as well as to develop and adopt strategies for controlled processing. marketing, research and development.

Necessary assistance and incentives be given to the farmers who are growing or who shall grow medicinal plants.

Facility of tax exemption for initial years can also be of great benefit to local farmers.

Establishment to Technical Expert Committee to examine the difficulties in cultivation, processing, extraction, drying, storages, quality assurance and standardisation, as well as supply and export in order to develop future plans of action.

Formation of Technical Expert Committee on ethnobotanical aspect, distribution, availability taxonomy, pharmacognosy and ethnopharmacology, as well as for government and private sector collaboration, research, manufacturing, and marketing studies.

Information regarding each and every crude drug of herbal origin be gathered in a pool like NAPRALERT.

Scope of education regarding wild and cultivated medicinal plants survey, collection and identification should be enhanced in all the R & D institutions of the country.

I have mentioned the problems we are facing as regards the proper awareness of medicinal plant wealth. I have mentioned the advancement in the use of medicinal plant material for industry and industrial projections. I have also given the proposals for policy formation regarding our indigenous herbal wealth and the relevant developmental strategies that can be adopted in this field. Since its establishment, Hamdard has contributed fairly to the national health and this effort aimed at better health thru' herbs continues. Hamdard is promoting the health of the nation thru' medicinal plants. I am confident that UNIDO and other esteemed agencies shall take interest in Hamdard's plans to create the awareness regarding economic value of medicinal plants, proper cultivation, procurement, marketing, manufacturing, and overall development of medicinal plant industry in Bangladesh for the benefit of the mankind.

It is fortunate that Bangladesh occupies a unique position among the developing countries and has great wealth of medicinal flora under varied climatic conditions.

The Role of Hamdard in Development of medicinal Plants Industry Hamdard in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is engaged in production and marketing of over 2,500 medicinal products classified under pharmacopoeia of Eastern Medicine and as in-house trade over the counter and prescription products, as well as simples (mufradat) in all the possible forms. A centre for Horticulture for training of farmers has been established at Hamdard's project Madinat al-Hikmat which shall enable the farmers to gain expertise in large scale cultivation or medicinal plants not only on the national scale and for use at Hamdard Laboratories, but for export too. This shall also result in the elimination of the middleman and the stockist.

Hamdard intends to compile a Directory of medicinally potential species of Pakistan and to establish a Centre for Excellence on Medicinal Botanics where experiments on cultivation shall be conducted. We intend to do the same in Bangladesh.

Hamdard also plans to establish a scientific information pool at the Bai'tal Hikmat, Hamdard University Library like the NAPRALERT at the College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago, (the computerised database derived primarily from scientific information gathered from the world literature on natural products).

Hamdard Laboratories has also planned the large scale production of intermediate and fine products such as:

a. Crude and purified extracts, essential oils, with proper preservation techniques and their marketing and export.

b. Isolation of active constituents such .as alkaloids, and glycosides, and determination of raw materials that can be used as precursors for the synthesis of compounds like vitamins, hormones, enzymes, fibers etc.

c. Increase in proprietary formulations in addition to prescription products manufacture which can be marketed over the counter.

d. Analysis all the crude herbal drugs (simple as well as compound foundations) at its newly established Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Hamdard University, Madinat al-Hikmat under full-scale screening programme for elementary compositions study of elements (e.g. potassium, sodium, nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements of the periodic table). This aspect, discussed at the three international conferences on the 'Role of Elements in Health and Disease' is gaining significance with time.

A non-governmental agricultural support programme for self-sustained economic development in arid zones has already been started as a project under Hamdard Foundation Pakistan and Madinat al-Hikmat with German collaboration aimed at education of the local farmers. Medicinal plants cultivation shall be an integral part of this project. Such steps are possible in Bangladesh keeping in view its tropical monsoon climate and its distinctive vegetation.