Future Prospect of Herbal Medicine: Opportunity, Challenges and Role of Bangladesh

Introduction: The use of herbal medicine increased worldwide. In Bangladesh, herbal medicine is not well documented though this medicine playing important role in the alternative health cares system. Due to forest diversity and traditional knowledge, Bangladesh has the potential to accept the challenge to meet local and global demands. In this review, we summarized the opportunity, challenges and role of Bangladesh to meet the local and global demand.

Methods: A systemic literature search was performed by combining variations of search terms and the main findings were extracted from the eligible article. The manuscript was written according to our study design and information collected from the article.

Results: From the study, it has been seen that Bangladesh have a great opportunity to uphold herbal medicine in both national and international market. Major challenges are associated with research and development, formulation, production, and regulation. Loss of biodiversity, industrialization, biopiracy, unscientific use, together with lack of education and infrastructure development are the weaknesses of the growth. Rigorous research is needed in agro-farming, plant-biotechnology and the pharmaceutical sector to increase the production of medicinal plants as well as their active medicinal ingredients. Conservation of biodiversity, documentation of traditional knowledge, and quality control will be prominent roles in the sustainability of this type of medicine in the 21^st century.

Conclusion: This study revealed that besides research and development, conscious efforts are needed by the national governing board with public and private sector involvement which will increase the productivity and flourish the national economy of Bangladesh.

Author(s): G M Sala Uddin, Md Mosharraf Hossain, Md Abdul Aziz and Sheikh M Selim Al Din

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