THE POPULARITY OF TRADITIONAL MEDICINE IN INDONESIA

Along with public skepticism against chemical drugs, the popularity of traditional medicines increases. The world has recognized the benefits of China's most well-known traditional medicine made of herbs. However, as a tropical country which has very diverse biological wealth, Indonesia apparently has also developed traditional medicine. Indonesia has various medicinal plants which is easily cultivated or taken directly from nature.

According to research, traditional medicine is very beneficial for health, and now is widely used because more accessible to the community, both its price and availability. Traditional medicine is widely used at this time also because they still can be digested by the body. In Indonesia, some companies treat traditional medicines to further modified and sold in the markets in the form of capsules, powders, liquids, crude, and tablets.

Traditional medicine is much sought after because of some advantages such as no side effects when used at normal doses, effective, even for certain disease which is hard to overcome medically, its cheap price and can be planted anywhere, and also because of its simpler applications. On the other hand, chemical drugs has been widely shunned because it has side effects even if consumed in normal doses, less effective in dealing with certain diseases, as well as its relatively high price.

In addition, doctor’s malpractice cases as well as drug administration errors that occur quite often in Indonesia make community switch to traditional medicines. These opportunities push some drug companies to combine traditional medicine with modern processing technology to make instant traditional medicine.