ibclogo XVI International Botanical Congess


Abstract Number: 51
Session = 21.13.7


BOTANICAL DIVERSITY, MEDICAL ETHNOBOTANY, & PUBLIC HEALTH


Thomas J. Carlson, Shaman Pharmaceuticals, South San Francisco, California 94708, USA


In tropical rural communities most people do not have access to pharmaceuticals. It has been estimated that 80% of the world=s population use botanical medicines for primary health care. Tropical countries contain the most biologically and culturally diverse traditional medicine systems in the world. Experimental biology research on tropical medicinal plants has demonstrated bioactivity for the treatment of malaria, infections of the skin, lungs, and gastrointestinal tract and other common tropical diseases. As ecosystems are degraded and languages are lost, these traditional botanical systems and the health care they provide become significantly diminished. It is valuable to have interdisciplinary research teams of ethnobiologists with training in botany, anthropology, medicine, pharmacology, and field linguistics to understand these traditional medical systems. Scientists able to assess how tropical botanical diversity is used as medicine have valuable contributions to make to innovative tropical public health programs.


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