Health and Natural Resources: The Extraction of Useful Chemicals from Plants and their Impact on Socio-Economic Development

Abstract

Poverty reduction strategies in developing countries are based on the need to develop and improve the quality of life of people. The successful strategies link wealth creating activities of adding value to local resources with employment creation. These strategies lead to increased capacity to produce needed consumer goods such as food, fuel, construction materials, textiles and pharmaceuticals starting from local resources. Most value-adding transformations of materials to consumer goods use chemicals conversion processes