As Much as 90 Percent of Drugs in Indonesia are Still Imported
Many hospitals in Indonesia still import drugs. Nearly 90 percent of the total demand for drugs in Indonesia is met from abroad. This was cited by Prof. Dr. H. Ervizal AM Zuhud of Forestry Faculty in the Morning Coffee (17/11) in the Campus Baranang of IPB.
Prof. Amzu, by this name he is commonly called, said, the sales turnover of modern pharmaceutical drugs imported every year in Indonesia continues to increase. "Based on the data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in the period from January to June 2011, the value of food imports of Indonesia has reached an equivalent of 45 trillion rupiah, drugs account for Rp 35 trillion. This happens because the government policies do not take the side with the people," said Prof. Amzu.
According to Prof. Amzu, the tropical forest of Indonesia consists of various types of ecosystems that have more than 239 species of food plants and more than 2039 kinds of herbs to cure and treat a wide range of human and livestock diseases. "It is appropriate for the forest in the future to be developed and managed together with forest farmer communities to produce various products of both timber and non-timber, including food and forest medicines with the local farmers as the major players of," said Prof. Amzu.
Based on the statistical data from the Interior Ministry, there are as many as 73,067 villages in Indonesia, 50 percent of which are inside and around the forest areas and inhabited by more than 550 ethnic groups.
"My scientific speech puts forward a concept of forest village development for the conservation of food and drug biodiversity with the perspective of local-small community self-reliance in the villages," he explained.
History and facts have demonstrated that this concept of conservation village can support the food medicine independency of the rural households in Indonesia, and also highly potential to withstand the impact of a new crisis in the global world economy.
Each area of ??natural forests, said Prof. Amzu, including national parks, provides raw material for medicines for many diseases suffered by the community. In addition, local knowledge systems are already built in the form of ethno-forest pharmacy for generations there. Further. Prof. Amzu said the development of herbal medicines herbs or traditional medicine is not based on the scientific methods of Western pharmaceutical science, but entirely on empirical tests of trials and errors from generation to generation.
"This can also be called ethno-forest pharmacy. We don’t need to conceal, and nor to contrast with the conventional methods of Western pharmaceuticals. Because empirics is not something bad or always wrong, it is just like Western pharmaceutical scientific methodology that is not always good and right," asserted the gentlemen who has more than25 years studied the ethno-botany.
The certification program of herbal medicines currently being developed needs simplification and improvement in the methodology to make it free from the dominance of western pharmaceuticals because both, said Prof. Amzu, are impossible to be equated, and to allow the use of traditional medicines as remedies in formal community health care.
Prof. Amzu then told about the empirical experience in early 2011; many Indonesian people suffering from cancer could be cured by drinking the extract of boiled sirsak leaves (Annona muricata). "Many people recovered and at the same time saved money without an expensive therapy of chemotherapy and very bad side effects," he added.
Another example, forest communities has long been known to use yellow root (Arcangelesia flava) to treat jaundice (liver disease or hepatitis). With this knowledge, the Center for Bio-pharmaceutical Studies of IPB (PSB) then examined its efficacy. And the result is this year of 2011 PSB IPB has received the patent for the yellow root as a strong heap-protector. (Mtd)
