The demand for pharmaceutical materials for medical and other purposes is growing rapidly. However, weak planning is giving rise to imbalanced demand and supply.
Mr Tran Binh Duyen President of Mediplantex National Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company, said: Vietnam has to import tens of thousands of tons of medicinal materials to serve domestic demand. The Government and the Ministry of Health have had many instructions for medicinal material development, but little progress has been made. He pointed out that Vietnam should have proper mechanisms and policies for medicinal material development.
President Duyen said Vietnam needs to define the four-stakeholder development model constituted by the State, businesses, farmers and scientists. It is urgently necessary to clearly define responsibilities, rights, power, and management mechanism for the four stakeholders. To date, no documents guide pharmaceutical material development, a field with remarkable diversity. Hence, Vietnam has not created a common process for medicinal herb development, from the stage of multiplication, harvesting and processing to the stage of consumption. The Government has funded a lot of pharmaceutical development research projects, but the work is limited to research, conservation and exploitation of genes.
"Scientists need more care and support to carry out projects and research concerning genetic conservation of medicinal herbs, and improve species for higher productivity. It is essential to link scientists with businesses to apply pharmaceutical material research, conservation and development results in rural areas in the form of technology transfer or business cooperation in order to optimise scientific research achievements,” he noted.
Currently, small-scale herbal extraction fails to meet the demand. For the time being, Vietnam has 3,000 medicinal material processing establishments, mostly very small-scale like shops or households. Larger entities are mainly located in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Lang Son and Yen Bai. They are now fiercely competing in price, not quality.
The pharmaceutical material market lacks proper management and the bond between medicinal material companies and scientists is loose because they do not have a cooperative mechanism. Relationships between pharmaceutical material companies and farmers are also completely spontaneous and dependant on market movements. This shortcoming also leads to discord in product cultivation and consumption. In many cases, companies suffer heavy losses because they fail to fulfil commercial agreements with other companies.
President Duyen said, to reinforce and develop medicinal herb zones, Vietnam first of all needs to have proper macro policies, specific plans, and long-term priority pharmaceutical development plans to encourage companies to invest in this field. Companies need to apply technological solutions to enhance the quality of products, particularly post-harvest technologies. They also need to boost marketing programmes in domestic and foreign markets to introduce the superiority of natural medicines to human health. This step will also help farmers increase profit from growing medicinal herbs.
Thanh Nga
Vietnamese
