Potential use of Eastern Hararghe Ethiopia medicinal plants for COVID-19- like symptoms: A review

Abstract

The world is in a great war with the rapidly and exponentially spreading virus, the corona virus disease (COVID-19). To win this pandemic, pharmaceutical companies and scientists are in a tight race to get modern vaccines or drugs. Following such efforts, dexamethasone (one of the known corticosteroids) has shown hopeful potency against the pandemic corona virus disease (COVID-19) as per the WHO updated report. However, till the development of this review study, no single anti-COVID-19 drug/or vaccine has fully been announced yet. Hence, for a time being, the world has been forced to turn its face towards alternative phyto-medicines. Accordingly, scholars by now have recommended plant lead traditional medicines as first aid kits to minimize the impact of corona virus pandemic. In this review paper, an attempt is made to introduce some selected possible antiviral medicinal plants found in the Eastern Hararghe region of Ethiopia. We focused on those plant species which have routinely been used by the local community to treat infectious diseases such as flu, cold, cough, sore throat, headache, pneumonia, lung abscess, fever, malaria, asthma and related viral infections. A total of 33 plant species from different families (Fabaceae is the dominant one, 18.18%) were reviewed. Since the above mentioned infections are symptomatically similar to that of COVID-19, the plant species reviewed in the present paper may have a potential to treat and control the surging corona virus pandemic. This review may therefore provide useful information about the antiviral therapeutic uses of most preferred medicinal plants of Eastern Hararghe, Ethiopia. The present review may serve as an input to the research and development of antiviral agents in the future.