INDONESIA HAS 40,000 TYPES OF TRADITIONAL MEDICINE

Banjarmasin, Jun 21 (ANTARA) - Indonesia, as the largest archipelagic country with a variety of flaura which is rich in herbal plants, has about 40,000 tradiotional medicines.

The number of traditional medicines was made by Irwan Hidayat, President Director of herbal medicine maker PT. Sido Muncul in a seminar on the utilization of herbal medicine in health with 200 physicians attending it at Swiss Bell Hotel, here, on Saturday.

Nearly 50 percent of the total herbal medicines were found in Kalimantan forest and the rest went to some regions in Indonesia.

Unfortunately, thousands of tradtional medicines was on the brink of extinction just because of big scaled legal and illegal logging activities in the past few years.

PT. Sido Muncil itself could only cultivate around 1,200 types of medicinal plants currently difficult to find in Indonesia.

"We are very concerned over this condition, because less Indonesian citizens give a serious care to the survival of medicinal plants which are currenlty in the brink of extinction," he said.

Based on the results of a research, it was proven that some traditional herbal medicines was able to improve the antibody. For example, "Tolak Angin" for catchcold has been recognized as a medicine and no longer a herbal medicine (Jamu).

According to some doctors, even they are convinced on the efficasy of traditional herbal medicine to cure some disease, but they still had no courage to include in their prescriptions as it was a violation of ethics.

Dr Dharma, a member of the South Sulawesi chapter's Indonesian Physicians Association, said if he recommended his patient to make use of herbal medicines to cure a certain disease, it was not problem as long as it was not written in a prescription.

This condition really ran counter to that in Korea which has allowed the hospital to make use of herbal medicines. "A patient in advanced country is given a chance to choose in the sense whether he wants herbal or modern medicine."
Why are traditional herbal medicines alternatives, because their efficacy has been recognized after conducting some scientific laboratory test.