A large proportion of the population in a number of developing countries still relies on traditional practitioners, including traditional birth attendants, herbalists and bone-setters and on local medicinal plants to satisfy their primary health care needs. Traditional medicine has maintained its popularity in a number of Asian countries, such as China, India, Japan and Pakistan. The Japanese per capita consumption of herbal medicine appears to be the highest in the world. During the last decade, there has also been a growing interest in traditional and alternative systems of medicine in many developed countries. A survey among Member States of the European Union in 1991, identified about 1400 herbal drugs used in the European Economic Community.
Medicinal plants are the oldest known health-care products.
Their importance is still growing although it varies depending on the ethnological, medical and historical background of each country. Medicinal plants are also important for pharmacological research and drug development, not only when plant constituents are used directly as therapeutic agents, but also when they are used as basic materials for the synthesis of drugs or as models for pharmacologically active compounds. Legislative controls in respect of medicinal plants have not evolved around a structured control model. There are different ways in which countries define medicinal plants or herbs. As a result, different approaches have been adopted with regard to licensing, dispensing, manufacturing and trading in order to ensure the safety, quality, and efficacy of medicinal plant preparations.