But sales are climbing 13% a year in places like China, Latin America and India, which are just developing their taste for Western medicines.
Professor Ranjit Roy Chaudhury, a member of the council, said that in some cases the herbs may be more effective than Western-style medicines.
The size of the ancient and modern drug markets are roughly the same, though, because most of the Western-style medicines sold in China are cheaper generics.
In the 1990s several big pharmaceutical firms, including Bayer AG of Germany, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, formed alliances with Chinese research institutes or companies that specialized in traditional Chinese medicines, aiming to apply modern drug-hunting techniques to screen Chinese herbal medicines for potential Western blockbusters.
In the 1990s several big pharmaceutical firms, including Bayer (nyse: BAY - news - people ) AG of Germany, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, formed alliances with Chinese research institutes or companies that specialized in traditional Chinese medicines, aiming to apply modern drug-hunting techniques to screen Chinese herbal medicines for potential Western blockbusters.
In Thailand, only hospitals are allowed to research and produce new herbal medicines, and while Western drugs can be approved in months, traditional remedies that make use of any modern processing or ingredients may take a decade or more to be cleared.
Sales of the Chinese medicines should cover the development costs of the Western-style drugs.
Across Asia, hospitals and doctors are mixing their medicines, blending elements from both traditional and Western practices.
He also called for a deeper commitment to basic education across the continent, where school enrollment levels are dangerously low in some regions, and called on western pharmaceutical manufacturers to work to find cost-effective ways to provide preventative medicines and vaccines to curb the high rates of AIDS and tuberculosis through much of the continent.
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