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sti Winarni, 39, has been selling traditional herbal medicine (jamu) for the past 25 years and not once has she experienced a slump in demand. Instead of taking drugs, many people choose herbal drinks such as curcuma or temulawak. The plant species has been long known for its wide-range of health benefits, including anti-inflammatory effects.

“This [curcuma] is the cure for all health problems,” she said.

Esti believes that people regularly consuming curcuma are also less likely to have chronic health problems such as diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension.

The 2010 Health Basic Research (Riskesdas) report says that 59.12 percent of the country’s population knows about or regularly consumes curcuma.

“If we can further promote the use of jamu and make around 80 to 90 percent of the population interested in consuming jamu, people won’t get ill anymore. This should secure the place of jamu in our health care system,” said the Health Ministry’s traditional, alternative and complimentary health service director, Abidinsyah Siregar.

Integrating the traditional medicine into the existing formal health care system is one of several health development goals in the 2010-2014 Health Ministry Strategic Plan (Renstra).

The government expects that by 2014, 250 regencies and municipalities — 50 percent of local administrations — will have developed traditional health care services.

Under the program, each regency and municipality should have several community health centers (Puskesmas) that work as service models for delivering traditional care.

The two types of traditional health care services provided by the community health centers are herbal medicines and acupuncture and acupressure services.

The centers will also have to conduct various activities to introduce plants with positive health effects.

“We have achieved 30 percent of the total target,” said Abidinsyah.

According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the population in some Asian and African countries benefit from traditional medicine for primary health care.

Around 70 to 80 percent of the population in many developed countries have made use of some form of alternative or complimentary medicines, such as acupuncture.

Nyoman Kertia, a traditional medicine specialist from Gadjah Mada University, said that incorporating traditional medicine into the formal health care system faced an uphill struggle.

“It’s still controversial. Our colleagues from conventional health care services remain unaware of the benefits of traditional herbal medicine. Some of them even say traditional medicine is a kind of black magic, which is untrue,”
he said.

Some research studies on herbal medicines conducted by Gadjah Mada University’s school of pharmacy have shown promising results for the scientific community, with celery thought to increase the effectiveness of anticoagulant drugs doctors use to avoid deaths caused by strokes, and garlic thought to reduce the toxic effects of chemical drugs to the liver.