**6. Importance of phytotherapy (for diseases control) within the global health care system**

 Phyto (plants in the form of leaves, flowers and roots) therapy (treatment) has continued to reflect a great deal of significance in health care around the world in curing diseases while also ensuring a good state of health and/or conditions is maintained. In fact, a significant proportion of the entire global populace had found solace in phytomedicine, embracing it as a major source for their health care system as maintained by WHO in one of their submissions; hence, presenting the impact or relevance of herbal therapy in this chapter cannot be out of context with regard to medicine or medicinal products emanating from these MPs such as *Papaver somniferum*, *Cinchona*, *Hibiscus sabdariffa*, *Rosmarinus officinalis*, *Nigella sativa*, *Artemisia afra*, *Vatica rassak*, etc., some (about 5000 out over 250,000) had either being developed (as drugs or vaccines) and commercialized (morphine, quinine, ephedrine, etc.) and many others in the final process of drug development [2] for confirmation of safety and efficacy (clinical trials) against avalanches of illnesses including but not limited to hypertension, asthma, malaria, pain, hemorrhage, psychosis, cancer, migraine, etc. [58, 59]. This makes herbal medicine to become a basic health service to people of diverse culture irrespective of their status (poor or rich) and location (remote or urban), and this acceptance (in use either singly or combination with orthodox medicine) has continued to escalate in recent times [60], thereby complementing or reducing the use of modern medicine (despite its availability) probably due to inadequacies in providing holistic healing where behavioral, emotional, and/or spiritual factors are the underlying causes of the diseases [61]. In view of the foregoing, continents such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America with countries such as China, India, etc., had embraced the adoption of the two systems (phytotherapy and modern medicine) for their national health care needs. Although issues of safety, efficacy, and quality of herbal medicines have undermined their integration into national health care policy in some countries, this *Pharmacognosy: Importance and Drawbacks DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82396* 

had not prevented, in any big amount, the popular use by the citizenry. Interestingly too, because MPs are core sources for pharmaceutical manufacturing, they in addition to herbal medicines play an important role in pharmaceutical market (PM). In fact, in a reported submission, in 1995, they occupied 33.1% of the total PMs [55].
