Balancing policy, practice and cost of using medicinal plants in disease prevention and treatment

This study explores opportunities to increase medicinal use of natural products obtained from a class of plants, medicinal plants. It is widely believed that continued efforts in screening plant material may lead to additional medicines, however, that does not guaranty benefit, use or access for all sectors of population. The recent increase in demand for natural products for treatments is not widespread evenly among all socioeconomic sectors of many communities. Affluent sector may enjoy availability of easy access and better education about useful natural products while members of undeserved communities either lack resources and financial ability, or are not aware of presence of these natural medicines. This is exact opposite to recorded historical facts where poor used medicinal plants and rich confidently used synthetically manufactured medicines. Recent discoveries include extraction of vincristine and vinblastine from Catharanthus roseus that are cancer treating alkaloids (Sobiczewski, 2011; Yadev, 2011), and reserpine, an alkaloid extracted from Rauvolfia serpentina, for use in treating high blood pressure (Jerie, 2007; Sim, 2011) and depression (Slattery, 2004). We aim to present effective steps to introduce new health and economic policies aiming to increase access to natural products for patients, to assure higher confidence among health care providers on prescribing natural medicine, and to address economical and health cost. We recommend, (a) building support structure for research and discovery of new quality natural products, (b) create effective communication and education strategies, and (c) establish a commission to identify the most feasible partnerships among professionals in traditional and modern medicine.