Abstract
The use of medicinal plants for treatment of humans and animals is entrenched in the Maasai culture and traditional knowledge related to it is passed on from one generation to the next. A handful of researchers have in the past decades documented this knowledge. No single study has documented medicinal plant uses of the Maasai community as a whole. This review provides a consolidated database of the diversity and uses of medicinal plants among the Maasai in Kenya. The study will help conserve traditional medicinal plant knowledge that is valuable for the development of modern medicine. Relevant information on medicinal plants used by the Maasai of Kenya was extracted from journals, books, M.Sc., and Ph.D. dissertations. We found evidence of 289 plant species used by the Maasai of Kenya in traditional medicine. Most species were used to treat health conditions in the categories gastrointestinal and respiratory system disorders. The most used families were Leguminosae, Asteraceae, Malvaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Lamiaceae. Medicines were commonly prepared as a decoction and administered through oral ingestion, with roots reported to be the preferred plant part for medication. The Maasai preference for roots compared to other plant parts may be unsustainable and could threaten species availability in the future.
Highlights
All humans depend on plants for food, medicine, firewood, and more [1]
Kenya is not an exception; there exist other forms of heath care providers such as the government hospitals, clinics, private and faith-based health facilities, the rural population relies on traditional medicine in innumerable ways for their health care needs [4]
We describe and evaluate the diversity and use patterns of medicinal plants in the Maasai community of Kenya, we ask the following: (1) How many medicinal plant species have been documented for the Maasai community in Kenya, which plant species are most used for medicinal purposes, and which plant families do they belong to? (2) What are the ethnopharmacological uses of medicinal plants with high use reports, and which medicinal use categories do they belong to? (3) What parts of the plants are used, and how are the plant-derived medicines prepared and administered? (4) How homogenous is the use of medicinal plants among the Maasai of Kenya?
Summary
All humans depend on plants for food, medicine, firewood, and more [1]. The use of medicinal plants has played an important role in traditional cultures in alleviating human suffering [2]. The preference often given to a traditional pharmaceutical system is attributed to the efficacy of traditional medicinal care in the treatment of some diseases, ease of availability, and affordability compared to western medicine, and in addition traditional uses are culturally more acceptable [2,5,6]. This all shows that local medicinal knowledge can contribute to the alleviation of a broad variety of health care problems in both rural and urban populations who complement modern treatment with traditional therapies
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