The long evaluation period for medicines derived from traditional knowledge often comes in the way of their commercialisation, according to Prof. Ranjit Roy Chaudhury, official, World Health Organisation essential drugs programme and president of Delhi Society for Promotion of Rational Use of Drugs.

Prof. Chaudhury, who was in Bangalore for the Global Holistic Meet observed that there was a need to streamline evaluation of drugs based on traditional knowledge. India has been successful in commercialising traditional knowledge-based drugs for diabetes and hepatitis and tests are on for a drug for bronchial asthma.

The 8 to10 year evaluation period in vogue currently was a bit too long, he said. "When people ask us about the usage of various plants as medicines, we have no answer because it takes too long for us to evaluate them. One cannot evaluate traditional drugs by using methods used to evaluate synthetic drugs". He stressed the need for a stronger and faster framework for quality efficacy and safety tests for drugs.

Traditional medicine usage across the world being a people-driven movement could be popularised only by the people. In a country like India where 32 per cent of the people had not access to any kind of healthcare, the traditional system of medicine could be effectively employed.

In India's 10th five year plan, a lot of importance had been attached to the healthcare empowerment component including traditional medicines and plans were underway to set up health information systems across the country, he said.

According to Prof. Chaudhury, China was ahead of India as it managed to integrate modern medicine with traditional systems, but modern medicines must look at patients together. China accepted the traditional form following its 1950 Encephalitis-B epidemic.