Some health promoters simply believe that pills work better than herbal medicine. Moreover, many health promoters, like Carlos in Polho, do not know how to use medicinal herbs. Some health promoters are refugees or migrants unfamiliar with local plants. Some claim that curanderos are not willing to teach their trade since it is their source of income and hierarchy. Nevertheless, the creation of herbal gardens and remedies requires resources that health promoters do not have.
Time attending herbal gardens or making remedies is time away from their work in the harvests.
Money is needed to buy gardening tools, containers, syrup, and vaseline to make medicinal syrups and salves and to build adequate storage rooms. Relying on herbal medicine to curve Chiapas's adjusted infant and maternal mortality rates, which are amongst the worse in Mexico, is an overly ambitious goal and as Anna's partera, neglectful. Chiapas will still lead the nation in deaths due to diarrhea and have the second lowest access to immunization coverage and the fourth lowest life expectancy. Therefore, given Chiapas's poor health indices, and its immediate need, priority and resources should wisely be directed towards adequate and effective allopathic systems of care and treatments. Otherwise, herbal medicine will remain to be the only dying option.