The central government is supporting a programme named the "golden triangle" in which three institutes are working together to validate medicine protocols for the global market.These are the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Department of Indian System of Medicines.
Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told that the market for plant medicines would be worth a trillion dollars in the next three decades.India will soon be moving towards integrating the diagnostic practices of modern and allopathic medicine with curative treatments through traditional medicines.Under the Rs.1.2 billion golden triangle programme, more than Rs.100 million is being devoted to the development of a traditional knowledge digital library to document procedures and practices of unani, ayurveda and siddha formulations.
India would register 75,000 ayurvedic, 50,000 unani and 15,000 siddha formulations during the next year.
Eleven countries, including the US and Britain, have signed agreements with India to access the database being developed. The data on traditional medicines will be available in English, French, Spanish, Japanese and German.This will prevent people outside India, including NRIs, from claiming patents for already existing formulations.
"As 70 percent of the medicines used worldwide are plant-based, we have to protect our traditional medicinal plants," Ramadoss said. With this in mind, all the tests would be done at the molecular level, in order to scientifically establish the efficacy of these traditional medicines.
Special processing zones for medicinal plants are also being identified for enhancing production capacity of traditional medicine.
China occupies nearly 60 percent of this market's share while India just holds two percent which will be changed in the future.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service
