Thai traditional medicine development: The proposed development model of modern Thai traditional medicine

Nophadon Luangpirom

Faculty of Management Sciences,Silpakorn University,Petchburi,Thailand

Thai traditional medicine development: The proposed development model of modern Thai traditional medicine

Nophadon Luangpirom*

Faculty of Management Sciences,Silpakorn University,Petchburi,Thailand

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Available online 25 November 2015

Thai traditional medicine

Natural product

Folk traditional medicine

The development of modern traditional medicine in developing countries is facing challenges,and a potential solution was proposed to resolve these problems.Developing countries are trapped in the vicious circle of the natural product development in the modern scientifc paradigm.The application of the ethno research strategy is described to resolve these problems.First,Folk Traditional medicine knowledge inquiry is explored,testifed and verifed similar to R&D practice in modern biomedicine.Second,the appropriate technology to transform the traditional knowledge to create the prototype is determined.Third,the safety of the prototype equivalent to safety assessment in modern biomedicine for example,acute toxicity and chronic toxicity,is verifed.Fourth,the effcacy of the prototype in parallel to the stability test is verifed.The prototype must be safe for human use and the effcacy is at least comparable or more systematic than the folkTraditional medicine prepared by traditional method.The third and fourth steps must be proposed and approved by the medical Committee for Human Rights(MCHR)to ensure and protect the health of the volunteers.Finally,if these four steps pass according to the all criteria,then the registration process could be preceded and approved before commercialization.The Clinical study can be omitted if the traditional medicine is widely used in the community and safety is known and proven for more than 30 years. The Mawang compound Cough syrup is an example of these efforts to develop the folkTraditional medicine knowledge into the modern traditional medicine to support the concept“Self-Suffciency”for the national health care system.The modern traditional medicine will support the mainstream modern medicine as integrative medicine rather than the alternative medicine as the short term plan.

The novel drug development platform together with the multi-disciplinary research and the consortium development which combined the technical skills,research facilities and the required strategic capability to develop novel drugs from medicinal plants are suggested as the medium and long term plan. The establishment of the new agro-processing business in rural community should be changed according to the self-suffciency vision and sustainable development.The new agro-processing business is included the GAP(Good agricultural practice),GHP (Good harvesting practice)and the quality control of the plant raw material according to the herbal pharmacopeia.The mostimportant issue is that the fair trade policy shall be applied. These approaches will secure the developing countries and be able to escape from the dependency of the modern scientifc hegemony which has governed the developing countries for more than 400 years ago[1,2].

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank of Dr.Thawatchai Kamolthum, general director of Thai Traditional medicine and alternative medicine,for providing useful information and good support.

R E F E R E N C E S

[1]WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002–2005, [accessed 15.10.13].

[2]WHO.The promotion and development of Traditional medicine,;1978[accessed 15.10.13].

*E-mail address:drnophadon@yahoo.com.

Peer review under responsibility of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajps.2015.11.116

1818-0876/?2016 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.on behalf of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).