Traditional medicine from indigenous communities can be exceedingly helpful to the medical field, but stealing these medicines from developing countries/communities is hindering their ability to develop.
Yoonus Imran et al 2021 (Yoonus Imran: Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovation in Biotechnology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, Nalaka Wijekoon: Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovation in Biotechnology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, Lakmal Gonawala: Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovation in Biotechnology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, Yu-Chung Chiang: Department of Biological Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and K. Ranil D. De Silva: Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovation in Biotechnology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka and Institute for Combinatorial Advanced Research & Education (KDU-CARE), General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University, Rathmalana, Sri Lanka, “Biopiracy: Abolish Corporate Hijacking of Indigenous Medicinal Entities”, [Scientific World Journal], 02/18/2021, doi: 10.1155/2021/8898842)//shoque
Establishing national framework for the natural product certification would be one of the reliable solutions for this malignant problem resulting from distributional conflicts between private users and provider countries. Proper identification method should be further developed into a standard certification assessed case by case. When highly processed, multi-ingredient herbal products that are considered DNA metabarcoding will be the useful analytical tool in authentication where microsatellite-based barcoding for raw natural products followed by metabarcoding for the end product should be implemented [61, 62].
Sri Lanka as a country with a heritage of its own traditional medical system possesses the knowledge of indigenous communities that can be integrated in health care systems based on Western medicine. This would pave the way in implementing the concept of a One-World Medicine which is an ethically and socially acceptable alternative to forms of biopiracy. Most of the natural product exporting nations are lacking with the technological advancement due their Gross domestic product (GDP). Developing standard operating procedures (SOP) with the low-cost certification for the local use and export of plant and natural products will be helpful in mitigating the adulteration [63, 64].
Availability of an authenticated National List of Essential Medicines that include traditional formulas and herbal preparations will be crucial for countries with rich heritage of traditional medicine for the seamless integration of the concept One-World Medicine. This system has already been proposed in Thailand. The large sums of private and public money devoted to research and development and the scientific and technological advancements in medicine have not yet translated into many clinical products specifically traditional formulas and herbal preparations [62].
One of the most successful ways to translate clinical applications bench to bedside is through collaborations. The P4 among indigenous medical practitioner, biotechnology, pharmaceutical industries, universities, and national research centers could enable all the parties to jointly make decisions on which research projects to develop and the steps that should be taken to establish One-World Medicine [65, 66].
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6. Conclusion
Several initiations were established by academic institutions, industries, and international organizations to abolish adulteration and biopiracy including bioprospecting protocols. Unfortunately, the established systems are not properly followed by the developing countries due to their unaffordability of technical cost and policies. Considering cost-effective technologies and user-friendly agreements like Private-Public-People partnership will aid more support to abolish biopiracy.
Moreover, it is worth highlighting that most developing countries are mainly agricultural-based economy, and the GDP of the developing countries could be increased by enhanced bioprospecting via introduction of cost-effective DNA fingerprinting technologies and systemic establishment of 4P, utilizing their unique natural resources and traditional indigenous knowledge and thus not being a pray of corporate hijacking.