National Policy On The Anvil To Boost Plant-Based Drug Exports

A national policy is being formulated on medicinal plants to help the country substantially increase its share in the $60 billion world market for extracting plant-based drugs to five per cent. Indian companies are at present engaged in $70 million worth of business.

The policy, which is being formulated by the ministries of health, environment, science & technology, chemicals & fertilisers and commerce, will focus on ensuring long-term conservation of viable breeding populations of medicinal plants.

The policy-making exercise has been initiated by the department of alternative medicines in the health ministry with the help of scientists, pharmaceutical companies and conservation experts. The policy will seek to create a favourable economic environment for the cultivation of medicinal plants with the involvement of farmers and experts in the field.

 

It will suggest appropriate legislation and modify existing ones to regulate internal and external trade in medicinal plants and ensure adequate staffing and training of agencies involved in regulation. Legislative initiatives will undertaken to protect the existing resources and indigenous knowledge-base from bio-piracy.

Official sources said the policy will seek to privatise the indigenous knowledge-base via patent claims filed on superficial modifications of traditional knowledge and resources.

Globally, medicinal plants are the single most important source for new drugs and India is said to be a huge repository of as yet unexploited plant resources. According to Dr D B Anantha Narayana, chief of the Dabur Research Foundation, his organisation has initiated a major clinical trial program involving traditional medicine sources.

This way we will get the kind of technical data that drug firms need to scientifically evaluate drugs, he said. Unless such approaches are adopted, the countrys medicinal plant-sourced drugs cannot find a world market.

Narayana said that China has forged ahead of India in this field by notching up $500 million worth of business in the medicinal plants as opposed to the countrys mere $70 million in exports. This has been inspite of the fact that India enjoys a better reputation for extracting drugs from plants. A clear policy is the first requirement for boosting exports, he added.

A national medicinal plants conservation and indigenous knowledge fund has been suggested as part of the policy to receive contributions from industry and other sources to foster commercial utilisation of indigenous knowledge of native plants. The fund can be utilised to strengthen basic education and research in indigenous system of medicine.

Some initiatives taken by the ministry of environment include drawing up a code for bio-prospecting of medicinal plants.

These initiatives will be incorporated into the policy.

Sources said an international conference on medicinal plants, which is to be held in Bangalore from February 16 and will be organised by an NGO, the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions, will make appropriate recommendations to the government for the proposed policy.