Description

The use of herbal medicine increased for the management of diseases including prevention, diagnosis, and treatment at the same time it creating global health challenges in terms of quality, safety, and efficacy. Therefore, its quality control and proper management worldwide are still a big challenge. Besides scientific validation and technological standardization are needed for worldwide acceptance and future advancement to meet the global challenges. In the meantime, regulation and legislation of herbal drugs and/or supplements have been indorsed in very few countries, even though, most countries do not have any proper regulation, and the quality of this type of product sold is generally not guaranteed. WHO also provides their guideline for safety monitoring and reporting system is also available in another document published in the year 2000. Interestingly, there are many factors that influence the quality and safety of herbal medicine which can be from the cultivation to the final products. It can be categorized into external and internal issues. External quality challenges mainly include contamination by other materials (e.g., heavy metal, pesticide, microbes, mycotoxins, and other foreign matter like ash, adjuvant or organic solvents, etc.), adulteration, and misidentification. The internal challenge includes complex phytochemicals and no uniform ingredients.

Clinical Fragile

Research and development: Research of herbal medicine can be defined as the careful study of herbs and their supplements to discover new facts and general information about it and the development include research, quality control, efficacy, clinical study, scientific analysis, source of raw materials, preservation methods, processing, packaging processing, application, and distribution. Moreover, practitioners are often comfortable with the application of such medicines having good results experienced with patients. In addition, the scientific validity of herbal drugs and their supplements in research and development is still often questioned due to the application of analogous methodologies across different medicinal products and the lack of quality control and product standardization. So research and developments in herbal medicine are a great challenge. Other challenges: Including the above challenges, herbal medicine undergoes complications with processing and harvesting, infrastructure, clinical fragile, intellectual property rights (IPR) and bio piracy, irrational use, impediments of application, lack of regulation and controlling authority, etc. Besides challenges, there are lots of opportunities for herbs and their related products in the future, because of their increasing demand and fast-growing market in both emerging and industrialized nations in the world. The acceptance of plant-derived health care products and their use in the cosmetics industries are increasing gradually. Moreover, over three-quarters of the world’s population relies mainly on plants and plant extract for health care. It is projected that the market price of herbal medicine was USD 98.60 billion in 2020 and is estimated to reach USD 391.22 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.8 % from 2021 to 2028. Therefore, herbs or medicinal plants will make an important contribution to the large economic development process.

Micro Propagation

The therapeutic potential of many herbs is yet to be fully discovered. Therefore, there are many clinical and research opportunities to find out new approaches and bioactive compounds from plants. For example, research published about the bioinformatics approach can be implemented for the identification and study of active ingredients from medicinal herbs. Generally, most of the therapeutic plants are wild-type and found in less developed and far-flung rural areas. Therefore, it’s farming by In vitro culture and micro propagation is another opportunity for small and industrial-scale production. This will not only produce opportunities for new research but will also create opportunities for entrepreneurship. Besides cultivation, a substantial amount of foreign exchange can be earned by exporting medicinal plants to other countries. A study revealed that for the fourteen-year period the global export of medicinal plants was USD 1.92 billion which was estimated as 601357 tons per annum and increased by 3.60 billion USD projected to 702,813 tons in 2014. According to the central government of India, the remedial plants have grown 33.2 percent during the year 2020-21. In addition, herbal medicine is being taught more in medical schools and pharmacy schools. So opportunities also exist in the teaching profession. Carrier openings in drug manufacturing companies, plant monographs, drug inspections, clinical trials, and the various newer fields e.g. molecular biology, nanotechnology, etc. Through daily news Med Page Today doctors do not know much more about complementary and alternative medicine than their patients do. Moreover, by an online survey, it was also seen that most healthcare professionals said that their profession was just as poorly informed about herbal remedies. So, there is a great opportunity to know about herbal medicine for medical taxonomists, pharmacologists, herbalists & chiropractors, ayush practitioners, and doctors.