YOGYAKARTA- Herbal medicine products are getting more popular day by day and this is supported by the government. As one of supports for the development of herbal products, Faculty of Pharmacy Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) held a Workshop and Dissemination Expo entitled Good Agriculture and Collection Practice (GACP) of Herbal Medicine Products.
According to the chairman of committee, Dr. Puji Astuti, MSc.Apt, the event is one of the activities of the Indonesia Managing Higher Education for Relevance and Efficiency 2009. Puji said that the workshop is mainly focused on farmers. These farmers would then be introduced to cultivation and marketing after harvesting of many herbal medicinal products.
"We introduce farmers to the matters in herbal medicine products, to make them interested in developing the products because they have good business opportunity," she said at the exhibition at Faculty of Pharmacy UGM, Saturday (31/7).
Meanwhile, she added that the expo displayed about 29 booths from small pharmaceutical and traditional industries from Yogyakarta and Central Java. The results of the exhibition and workshop will still be followed by dissemination of research results and development of herbal medicine.
"After the promotion, we'll follow it up with dissemination. We will share our experience in herbal products that we have studied to herbal medicine business players both large and small scale," she said. The dissemination will present 18 topics on the use and development of herbal medicines right from delivery method to usage.
As we all know that the government continues to expand the scope of traditional medical/herbal services gradually into the formal health services. For example, the Ministry of Health launched a program that delivers herbal medicine to Public Health Centers. Ministry of Health also has launched Jamu scientification program in the form of health service-based research. It is an effort and scientific demonstration process of herbal medicine conducted by researching doctors as well as public health services. The step is expected to boost the image of herbal medicine (Jamu) in order that they are accepted in medical circle. The goal is to provide scientific basis through health services-based research.
After scientification, revitalization has been done by Center of Traditional Medicine Development Center (SP3T) which is the liaison between the research-development with herbal medicine service as one of traditional medicines. The government has also entrusted 17 Educational Hospitals to integrate herbal medicine and the health service.