Past and future contributions to traditional medicine in the health care system of the Middle-East.

Due to the rich cultural heritage and relatively rich flora, a wealth of knowledge on traditional and folk medicine has been accumulated in the Middle-East. However, except Turkey, the number of ethnobotanical field studies is few and mainly focused on Unani medicine, which is practised widespread in the southern communities. Urgent scientific field surveys should be conducted among the native people in order to document the wealth of knowledge on folk medicine, other than Unani medicine, before it will be lost by the erosive effects of modernization.