Traditional herbal medicines used for fertility control in North East India: potential for discovery of contraceptive drugs

Abstract

One of the most critical problems of developing countries like India is its enormous increase in human population. Contraceptive Prevalence Rate of India is 48.3 and as the vast majority of population belong to rural areas, the family planning programmes have largely remained unsuccessful because of many factors including lack of availability of contraceptive drugs in rural markets, lack of availability of medical personnel to rural people, as well as the lack of acceptability of synthetic drugs due to various socio-cultural and religious perceptions prevailing among ethnic communities. These contributed to a growing interest among researchers in developing contraceptives of natural origin and at present natural herbal contraception have become one of the major focuses in modern contraceptive research. Since time immemorial herbal drugs have been practiced by various rural communities and ethnic tribes in North East India, and hence the acceptability of herbal contraceptives is expected to be much higher among rural folk. Ethnic communities are using plant based medicinal products even today. This study aims at highlighting the contraceptive property of some plants used for fertility control as components of traditional herbal medicines in North East India, which need evaluation for the potential discovery of contraceptive drugs.