An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants in Ethiopia

An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants in Wayu Tuka District, East Welega Zone of Oromia Regional State, West Ethiopia

Since time immemorial, people have used plants as medicine. The investigation of plants and their uses is one of the most primary human concerns and has been practiced by all cultures for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years, though it wasn’t called ‘Ethnobotany’ [1]. Perhaps as early as Neanderthal humans, plants were believed to have healing powers [2]. The earliest recorded uses are found in Babylon about 1770 BC and in the code of Hamurabian ancient Egypt about 1550 BC. In the early 1500 s, Indian fever bark was one of the first medicinal plants to find appreciative consumers in Europe, which was taken from the cinchona tree (Cinchona officinalis), the bark of which was used as an infusion by native people of the Andes and Amazon highlands to treat fevers. Jesuit missionaries brought the bark to Europe and by the early 16^th century the name of this medicine was transformed to “Jesuit fever bark” [2].

Traditional medicine comprises of therapeutic practices that have been in existence, for hundreds of years, before the development and spread of modern medicine and are in use today [3]. These practices vary widely, in keeping with the social and cultural heritage of different countries. Traditional medicine includes a diversity of health practices, approaches, knowledge, and beliefs incorporating plant, animal, and/or mineral-based medicines; spiritual therapies; manual techniques; and exercises, applied singly or in combination to maintain well-being, as well as to treat, diagnose, or prevent illness [4]. Traditional medicine was once again redefined in 2008 as the sum total of knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures that are used to maintain health, as well as to prevent, diagnose, improve or treat physical and mental illnesses [5].

A major component of traditional medicine is that which uses medicinal plants. Plant-based traditional medicine plays a key role in the development and advancement of modern studies by serving as a starting point for the development of novelties in drug discovery [6]. Various modern drugs were extracted from traditional medicinal plants through the use of plant material following the ethnobotanical leads from indigenous cures used by traditional medical systems [7]. On top of their use in fighting various ailments at local level, different medicinal plants are used as export commodities, which generate considerable income [8]. China takes the lead (45%) by importing the highest number of herbal medicines for preparation of drugs and this is followed by the United States of America (15.6%) and Australia (10.5%) [9].

In Ethiopia, the use of traditional medicinal plants is widely practiced. The wide spread use of traditional medicine in Ethiopia could be attributed to cultural acceptability, efficacy against certain type of diseases, physical accessibility and economic affordability as compared to modern medicine [10]. The size of the Ethiopian flora is estimated at 6,000 species of vascular plants of which about 10% are believed to be endemic [11-18]. Traditional remedies are the most important and sometimes the only source of therapeutics for nearly 80% of the Ethiopian population and 95% of the preparations are of plant origin [10]. Due to various reasons, such as knowledgeable people in the society, the knowledge on medicinal plants of the country is getting lost. Since the knowledge of traditional medicine is transferred orally from generation to generation, basic information on the use of the plants and the part used, drug preparation methods, the diseases treated and others may be lost and discarded in the knowledge transfer process. Therefore, documentation of medicinal plants and the indigenous wisdom associated with them is important in order to pass the knowledge to the next generation since the plant materials and the indigenous knowledge can be the basis for the invention of modern drugs on top of the heritage values of the resource. In addition, such studies are vital in order to identify threatened medicinal plant species to give due attention for proper management and conservation. Thus, this study was initiated to document the traditional medicinal plant knowledge of the people and the threats currently affecting medicinal plants in Wayu Tuka District. 

http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/9/1/68