Health care can be intimately linked to conservation and ethnobotany because many medical plants are found in habitats endangered by current land use. At this critical point, it is a matter of some urgence to legitimize and promote traditional ways of curing and to make people aware that continued access to plant medicines is dependent on forest conservation.
As Hoffmann (1983) notes, until recently almost every culture all over the world used healing plants as the basis for its medicine. For thousands of years plants have demonstrated their efficacy and significance, although the therapeutic philosophy and rationale behind the plant use might differ. Each culture had basic healing plants from which remedies are made. This range of plants would vary from area to area, depending on the local ecosystem. It is rare to find herbs with equivalent actions in any other area; just as rare as it is to find plant species or even botanical types which might be totally different but nevertheless, various human problems are dealt in a similar botanical way. People do not always restrict themselves to the plants provided by the local ecosystem within which they happen to live. Currently, people’s food may come from anywhere in the world and modern information technology brings the world into people’s homes, opening up their mental worlds and expanding their emotional lives to a wide range of influences. Notwithstanding these advantages, the human impact on local ecosystems must invariably be borne in mind. At present, the range of plants available locally is being reduced, as they have fallen victim to intensive agriculture, deforestation and reforestation, and the expansion and industrialisation of towns therefore. Therefore, there are a few truly natural, wild habitats left.
Initially, plants are used as man’s first medical treatment and means to improve health. Many rural people and urban poor, especially in developing countries, still rely on the use of
medicinal plants even in a whirl of cultural, social and economic changes. Van Seters (1995) reports more than 35,000 plant species are being exploited by people around the world for medical purposes but perilously they are uncontrolled by local and external trade. So far, an estimated forty tropical species have been incorporated into modern medicine but only a small part of the tropical flora has been thoroughly analysed for their pharmacological properties. Hence, the extinction of approximately 3,000 plant species annually could imply the loss of potential drugs to combat such incurable diseases as cancer and HIV/AIDS.
On the one hand, deforestation has meant that certain medicinal plants and other useful wild plants have become more difficult to find and some are on the verge of extinction. As the number of plants diminishes so does the knowledge or culture associated with them since people who have a deep understanding of the properties of their local plants and wisdom of nature die and their knowledge perishes with them because of changes in socio-economic situations. Hence, rainforest deforestation poses a clear threat to human safety by causing such natural disasters as landslides, floods, soil erosion and the spread of certain disease, such as diarrhoea. Moreover, the extinction of medicinal plants and traditional healers presages the enormous risk of the lost of medicinal plants knowledge to developing and industrialised countries.
For thousands of years humankind has used plants as a means of healing of ailments and still continues to rely on them for health care, particularly in developing countries where the traditional practitioner usually applies them in their treatments of patients. Besides providing food, plants have been used for other purposes. Medicinal plants, for example, play an important role in the lives of rural people, particularly in the rural areas of developing countries where only few Public Health Care centres are available. It should also not be overlooked that plants used in traditional medicine by local people throughout the world are now often assessed as sources of drugs for Western medicine.
Likewise, Van Seters (1995) notes that traditional medical practitioners and herbal remedies play an important role in the health care of millions of people in developing countries. According to WHO (1983), 85% of this population does not have access to Western medical care. In most developing countries, traditional and modern health systems operate independently in non-hospital care, but in remote rural areas only traditional healing and herbal home-remedies might be available. Therefore, in these countries there is a great demand for medicinal plants most of which come from the forests. For this reason, it can be expected, that in the future, the use of medicinal plants will increase because of population growth and not forgetting the influence of the WHO policy on traditional medicine in Primary Health Care.
Unquestionably, health care is very important in building a better future; physical and mental health is essential to people living in developing countries. It is also a human investment in national development programmes. Two important health care strategies are Community Health and Primary Health Care (PHC). These strategies are officially introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Declaration of Alma Ata (WHO 2003), by which the international community committed itself to the global strategy of ‘Health for all by the year 2000’, as in most countries of the Third World, health conditions are inadequate since the people there have almost no access to modern health services.
WHO defines Primary Health Care in the Declaration of Alma Ata (WHO/UNICEF 1978: 3-4) as ‘… essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-
determination. It formsan integral part of both of the country’s health system, of which it is the central function and main focus, and of the overall social and economic development of the community. It is the first level of contact of individuals, the family and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first element of a continuing health care process’. In the Primary Health Care strategy, launched by WHO (1978), the main concern is to pursue fairness in health care and prevention of illnesses, as well as ensuring accessibility (geographical, financial and cultural), especially for those deprived and vulnerable and high-risk groups.
Although, the global strategy of ‘Health for all by the year 2000’ failed to be successfully realised, it is still an inspirational goal of health development and it is believed that this could be achieved through revitalising Primary Health Care (PHC). Unquestionably, the cosmopolitan health services are disinterested in alternative and traditional health care, although most of the people are actually still dependent on them on account of the unfavourable geographical conditions in which they live and their lack of financial accessibility to the modern health services.
Farnworth et al. (1985) note that according to WHO approximately 80% of the world population, in particular the majority in developing countries, still rely on the efficacy of traditional herbal medicine for their primary health needs.
In relation to this, Slikkerveer (1990) points out that at that point WHO considered it then necessary to formulate a new approach for Primary Health Care as a reaction towards the use of traditional practices and perceptions of indigenous peoples as well as the result of numerous empirical studies carried out among others by Warren et al. in 1982, Buschkens and Slikkerveer in 1982, and MacLean in 1985 among others. Accordingly, WHO (1983) decided to promote the use of traditional medicine, including indigenous practices and various types of traditional healers and birth attendants to contribute to achieve a socially and economic productive life for all people. Lately, the effectiveness of traditional medicinal plants especially has led to the current international resurgence of interest in their use for both new drug development and for biodiversity conservation.