Although there is a long history of practice of traditional systems of medicine and acceptance of functional foods in the world market for holistic therapy, India has not been able to penetrate into the global market. The country’s share in the world market of herbal drugs of 100 billion dollars is still a dismal figure at around 0.5 per cent when compared to that of 40 per cent of China and 2.5 per cent of Thailand. But the country has no ready data available about its share in the world nutraceuticals or functional foods market which is worth about 400-500 billion dollars, according to Dr V P Kamboj, former director of Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow.

Dr Kamboj was inaugurating the Annual Conference of Southern Regional Indian Pharmacological Society (SRIPS 2009) at the PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore.

According to him, the wide acceptance of herbal drugs and functional foods as holistic medicine therapy for primary health care and immunomodulation has opened a wide opportunity for India. Notably, it has developed monographs for about 60 out of 800 most commonly used medicinal plants as compared to nearly 1200 plants used in Chinese system.

The holistic systems of medicine is using medicinal plants containing useful ingredients instead of isolated chemical components as therapeutics or immunomodulators. rasayanas (plants with immunomodulatory properties) are routinely practised to develop body resistance to prevent disease. Herbal medicine as holistic therapy is still used by about 70-80 per cent population of developing countries and nearly 30-40 per cent people of developed world as functional foods, he said.

He said India is home to three (Allium sativum-garlic; Aloe vera; and Panax ginseng.) of the ten best selling herbal drugs in the developed world. Further, the country has a rich biodiversity wealth being one of the twelve mega biodiversity centres of the world. Its 45,000 plant species growing in diverse agro climatic zones offer opportunities to grow any plant. Indian traditional remedies use twelve medicinal plants most commonly each in 50 to 219 formulations. The formulation 'Triphla', includes the three mostly widely used plants namely Terminalia chebula, Terminalia belerica and Embelia ribes, is an immunodulator.

Later, while speaking to Pharmabiz from Lucknow, Dr Kamboj said, “Pertinently, with the development of information technology, we have computerized all the traditional knowledge of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani systems, containing medicinal plants and remedies to prevent piracy and to protect intellectual property and biodiversity. However, these efforts have not been supported by biological efficacy compared to chemical profiling data of individual plants and formulations. Therefore, India needs to develop bio-efficacy linked chemical finger printing of high value medicinal plants and formulations, supported by organic farming agro-technology, biosafety and limited clinical trial efficacy data to have rich share in global holistic health care markets.”

In his inaugural address, he had said that the logic behind the holistic medicine approach is a healthy mind in a healthy body in a healthy environment. This approach advocates balanced diet including use of resistance building medicinal plants, physical exercise or yoga and healthy environment for the prevention of disease. Thus, the holistic medicine therapy is based on therapeutic experience of generations of practising physicians of indigenous systems of medicine for hundreds of years. The initial documented records mentioned use of medicinal plants for therapy dates back to about 5,000 years in Atherved and Rigved in India, as also in Chinese and Unani literature, he said.