Plants: An alternative source for antimicrobials

No doubt that antibiotics are a miracle drugs. They stands against various infectious diseases for decades and saved millions of lives. However, the recent failure of antibiotics due to the dramatic emergence of multidrug resistant pathogens and the rapid spread of the new infections, urge the health organizations and pharmaceutical industries all over the world to change their strategy and stop going on the slow growing production of more synthetic antibiotics against the fast growing antibiotics-resistant microorganisms, while there are considerable alternative sources of natural antimicrobials from plants with different mode of actions, some of them are employed in traditional medicine for centuries and was found to have competitive effects compared to some commercial antibiotics. This review presents the potency of plants as alternative source for antimicrobials.