Herbal

The fastest-growing section of the economy may not be the business process outsourcing sector after all. In all likelihood, it might be the herbal products sector enjoying the highest growth rate.

Herbal products are used for skin care formulations, food supplements and medicinal applications. Filipino consumers have not only been receptive to herbal products. Many herbal derivatives are now exported to the world market.

The beauty of this blooming herbal sector is that it is founded on a very broad base. Most of the herbal products are grown in small farms and backyard gardens. That provides additional incomes for a large number of Filipinos.

Most of the producers of herbal products are small-scale enterprises. There are at least 5,000 (probably up to 10,000) small- and micro-enterprises composing this rapidly growing section of the economy.

There are still no precise economic figures we can work with since a large portion of the herbal products industry operates in the informal economy. A rough estimate of the size of this sector is in the neighborhood of P4 billion. That is not a small number, considering it involves tens of thousands of small producers in the lowest income brackets.

The herbal industry began growing rapidly after the enactment of Republic Act 8423, the Traditional Alternative Medicine Act (TAMA). The law was advocated by Juan Flavier when he was Fidel Ramos’ health secretary. Sen. Edgardo Angara shepherded the bill through the congressional grind.

TAMA makes it state policy “to improve the quality and delivery of health care services to the Filipino people through the development of traditional and alternative health care and its integration into the national health care system.” The law promotes the use of traditional, alternative, preventive and curative health care modalities proven to be safe, cost effective and consistent with public standards on medical practice.

In part, the policy of developing our herbal industry aims to reduce the country’s dependence on imported synthetic drugs. The policy likewise seeks to increase access of poor Filipinos to affordable yet effective products extracted from natural sources in the form of food supplements, cosmetics and therapeutic drugs.

The Department of Health listed ten medicinal plants in the Philippine National Drug Formulary (PNDF). These are: lagundi (for asthma, cough and fever), ulasimang bato (for uric acid), bawang (for managing high blood pressure), bayabas (for diarrhea), akapulko (for fungal infections), sambong (for renal stones), ampalaya (for high blood sugar), yerba buena (for pain relief), niyog-niyogan (for purging intestinal worms), and tsaang gubat (against tooth decay).

In addition to TAMA, Republic Act 7394 or the Consumers Act of the Philippines acknowledges herbal plants as legitimate drugs. The law states that the term “drug” shall include herbal and/or traditional remedies listed in the PNDF.

Public support for herbal medicines, boosted by national policy, proved stronger than expected. This is especially true for cough relief formulations. This must be the reason why one major pharmaceutical company, seeing its best-selling synthetic cough relief syrup suffer declining sales, chose to mount a campaign attempting to discredit herbal formulations.

In a major ad campaign, the pharmaceutical giant has unfairly characterized herbal remedies as contaminated with bacteria. This is a malicious slur on the entire herbal products industry.

Clinical tests show that reputable brands of herbal remedies have bacterial content well below the microbial limits set by the DOH-FDA. They could not possibly harm users of these remedies. The ad campaign, aimed at protecting market share and profitability, is simply irresponsible.

The ad campaign does not only harm the specific herbal remedy to the popular synthetic cough syrup. It undermines the growing public acceptability of alternative natural remedies.

That growing public acceptability, unaided by big-budget advertising, must be due to the efficacy of the herbal alternatives available in the market. This is a good sign because it broadens public access to remedies to the most common health concerns. It is an even better sign because it supports the growth of so many backyard industries that provide livelihood for so many Filipinos.

If herbal cures were a fraud, they would not be enjoying the strong consumer support we now see. Let us not insult the intelligence of the Filipino consumer by peddling distortions about alternative remedies to mainstream synthetic drugs.

Western medicine increasingly centers on introducing synthetic chemicals to the body to address maladies. There is some merit to this, of course.

However, there has been, over the past few years, a growing appreciation for using natural ingredients in addressing maladies. The wisdom of traditional healing practices, including prevention of ailments by way of general wellbeing, has recently enjoyed some sort of revival.

Western medicine and traditional healing approaches need not be mutually exclusive. Increasingly, doctors trained in western medicine have become more appreciative of traditional healing approaches — including the rediscovery of the effectiveness of herbal remedies.

This is a healthy development in contemporary culture. It encourages a holistic view of health, adding prevention to cure, abetting the body’s own capacity to heal with the need for intervening through the use of synthetic formulations. It widens the range of possible approaches to the most common maladies.

It will be a sad day when the merging paradigms of health care, the growing cultural appreciation for alternative and traditional approaches to cure, are undermined by banal corporate interest in cornering all the profit.

Surely, the arbiters of health and cure available to all sections of society must have something to say on this ad campaign that maliciously misinforms the public.