Need for quality control

The methods of quality control of pure drugs, either plant derived or synthetic, is today well established with standards covering authenticity, general quality, purity and assay. The situation regarding the quality of numerous herbal drugs used by manufacturers or sold directly to the public is by no means well established. From a conventional pharmacological perspective, herbal medicines taken in whole form cannot generally guarantee a consistent dosage or drug quality, since certain samples may contain more or less of a given ingredient. Quality control of even popular herbal remedies based on traditionally used formulae and methods is a challenge, especially because they are now mass produced in contrast to the one-to-one careful dispensing of these recipes by the physicians of yore. Then the obligation to quality was implicit with no external drivers or standards to be adhered to.

In the present times, the need for standardization is all the more imperative as herbal drug preparation has now moved from a small scale to mass production by stakeholders whose primary objective is mass salability and of course profit. Large-scale production of herbal drugs has only started in the last 100 years or so. Now that the commercialization of herbal medicine has happened, the onus of maintaining its quality is shared by all concerned with its development. Herbal market being poorly regulated in many countries, the assurance of safety, quality and efficacy of herbal products has become an important issue.