Quality Control of Indian System of Medicines: A Vital Need

Indian system of medicine is an ancient way of healing widely practiced in India as well as abroad that consists mainly of Unani and Ayurveda. Over the recent years, there has been a long debate over the quality of the herbal raw materials including Indian herbal products. Today, herbal products rarely meet the desired standard, as a result of problems in identifying plants, genetic variability, variable growing conditions, differences in harvesting procedures and processing of extracts, and above all, the lack of information about active pharmacologic principles. Environmental conditions such as sunlight, rainfall, altitude, temperature, soil, storage conditions as well as different harvesting procedures, time and method of collection, manufacturing processes such as selecting, drying, purifying, extracting, and genetic variability can create substantial variability in product quality and in the concentration of plant chemicals within different products. Adulteration, aflatoxin and microbial contamination are other important factors affecting the quality of the herbal products. Though WHO has elaborately mentioned the quality control measures including the good manufacturing and good agricultural and collection practices in detail but still there is a big gap between the available information and its practical implementation. It is therefore an important need to comply these guidelines in order to get an overall safe and effective herbal product.