Herbal medicines enjoy resurgence

Despite the legal restrictions imposed 2 years ago, herbal medicines in Germany have lost none of their popularity with the general public. The latest statistics in fact reveal a pleasing trend reversal, as reported by Professor Dr. Michael Popp, Chairman of the Committee for Research into Natural Medicine (CRNM), when he addressed a press conference in Munich. Although the costs of herbal medicines are reimbursed by the statutory health insurance (SHI) schemes only in a few precisely defined exceptional cases, the market for herbal medicines in 2005 has grown by 4 percent compared with 2004. Particularly marked gains were recorded for the scientifically well-documented, high-quality herbal medicines, while many of the only poorly-documented herbal products recorded a sometimes dramatic slump in sales.

Professor Popp emphasised that research-based manufacturers of herbal medicines have been able to overcome the challenge imposed by restrictive legislation principally because doctors in Germany are still recommending scientifically well-documented herbal products to their patients or prescribing them on the Green Prescription form. Doctors’ recommendations were responsible for around 50 percent of the herbal medicines sold in pharmacies. A further proportion of sales can be attributed to advice provided by pharmacists and to the many years of positive experience that patients have gained with effective and well-tolerated herbal medicines.

The Committee for Research into Natural Medicine (CRNM) expects the new Federal Government to encourage fair and reliable conditions in the German pharmaceutical marketplace that will grant herbal medicines the same opportunities as medicines derived from synthetic chemistry. First and foremost this involves transparency.

At present, the manufacturers of herbal medicines are not permitted to state either on the outer pack or in the package insert that their medicinal product contains a special extract that has undergone scientific investigation to determine its efficacy and safety. However, only such a declaration or labelling would enable doctors, pharmacists and consumers to differentiate between herbal medicines of proven pharmacological quality and other products that may have been manufactured from the same plant but differ in terms of efficacy.

To quote Professor Popp: “Our goal is to gain acceptance for the inclusion of a specific declaration and labelling so that well-documented herbal medicines containing a special extract are immediately recognisable to all concerned.“

CRNM 1/2006 – 16 January 2006