December 3, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 8, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: The Pakistan Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Organization (PAMAPO) will be established under the supervision of a university to explore the importance of such plants, said the chairman of Higher Education Commission, Dr Attaur Rehman, on Tuesday.

He was speaking as chief guest at the inaugural session of a three-day workshop, organized by the World Wide Fund (WWF), on “Conservation and Sustainable Usage of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants”.

He asked the organizers of the workshop to prepare PC-1 by December 25 regarding the setting up of the PAMAPO.

With the setting up of the PAMAPO, an organized and focussed research would be conducted to collect detailed information on the available plants, and scientists would also work on new species, which are available in abundance in the country, the minister said.

“Unfortunately, with the ongoing deforestation and with the less awareness among people living in the areas where these plants are available, some of the rare species are being cut off ruthlessly.”

He said Pakistan and some other Muslim countries had plenty of these plants, which should be developed on commercial basis to provide easy health care to the people. Diseases like malaria and tuberculosis can be controlled through medicinal plants, if used effectively, he added.

The minister said there were over 400,000 flowering plants in the world and only less than two per cent had been studied for their potential pharmacological activities and bio-active chemicals constituents so far.

He said the annual sale of botanicals was over $62 billion around the world, which might rise to $3 trillion by 2010.

It may be mentioned that neither any institution had a clear mandate to address the conservation-related issues of medicinal plants, nor any base line data is available on their status in the country.