Utku Akgül, December, 2021
In order to stop these kinds of cases, pharmaceutical companies should establish special laboratories for the testing stages of herbal medicines and spend most of their investments in this area. Also professional technical teams should be formed for large monthly audits of pharmaceutical companies. Comprehensive reports should be requested by the health organisations every month, with the evaluation of environmental conditions on agricultural and collection practices, selection and planting of medicinal plants. According to the reports obtained, necessary sanctions should be applied to irresponsible companies. This complicated solution isn’t currently applying by whole world. However, it is becoming more common.
For example, pharmaceutical companies in Australia and Taiwan have established special laboratories to measure the dangerous ingredients of herbal medicines.
24% of herbal medicines from Taiwan evaluated over a one-year period were found to be prescription. Other pharmaceuticals identified in herbal products contain steroids, antibiotics and psychoactive drugs, the review said. Another investigation of traditional Chinese medicine products in Australia found extreme levels of cadmium,lead and arsenic in 61% of the preparations, the scientists reported that these levels were high enough to cause acute poisoning. It has also been found that some herbal medicines contain pesticides and pollutants related with poor storage. (Davey, 2017)
Although the lack of quality of herbal medicines problem is global, I found it more logical to take steps locally at first. Because this isn’t a problem that people can easily solve. Some countries are more sensitive than others in this serious topic, so they do more researches. Especially interacting with World’s Health Organization can be very effective and useful. Because this is an issue that all countries of the world should pay close attention to. In conclusion the success and needed time of the solution may vary depending mainly on the investments. Afterwards, it can take many years to leave the region and become global
