Socio-Economic Importance of Honey among Traditional Healers and Orthodox Practitioners in Iwo Local Government Area of Osun State, Nigeria

Od Ayeni,T Oluwalana,O.A Majekodunmi,Bo Okumodi,Am Aderemi,Pj Adekola

doi:10.4314/jasem.v24i11.1

Abstract

The necessity for people’s adequate and quality as well as good health and standard of living for overall National development informed the main reason for the study on Socio-economic importance of honey among traditional healers and orthodox medical practitioners in Iwo Local Government Area, Osun State. A total of 105questionnaires wereadministered, while 91 were retrieved from the respondents. Various uses of honey were investigated both for personal consumption and medicinal purpose. The result shows that 41.8 % of the respondent use honey for multiple purpose, while 35.2% use honey mainly for medicinal purpose, 16.5% use it mainly as beverages, while the remaining 6.6% for use in treatments. The Chi Square Test showed a higher calculated value of 385.71 than the tabulated value of 21.026. This confirms a strong relationship between the use of honey and social life of Iwo people. The major constraints discovered was that Traditional healers do not exercise strict control on the quantity doses of honey used for different ailments. It is therefore recommended that both rural and urban dwellers should be sensitized about the use of honey, in order to encourage sustainable consumption for improvement of health status. Keywords: Medicinal, orthodox, traditional, honey

Highlights

Bee keeping is a forest and wildlife resources activity which helps in food production and income generation
Honey bees are very essential for the welfare of mankind because it provides man with honey but more importantly because honey bees ensure the fertility of many economic tree species that man depends upon for his direct and indirect food supply
The FAO codex Ailment Commission defines honey as the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of flowers or from secretion coming from the living organisms feeding on plants that bees gather, transformed and combined with specific ingredients, stored and leave to ripen in the combs of hive

Summary

Introduction

Bee keeping is a forest and wildlife resources activity which helps in food production and income generation. Honey is the product of the digestion of nectar flowers by the worker bees It has been a source of sweetness in the diet of human being and other animals from time immemorial. He first published a series of 59 patients with wound and non-healing Ulcers, 80% of which had failed to heal with conventional therapy for period of one to two years He showed that wound which initially cultured positive for a variety of organisms were sterile for a week and that 58 of the wounds went on to heal rapidly with separation of eschardimminihed edema and rapidly repitheliation. In many Himalayan regions, where sugar is not readily available, honey is used as substitute to sugar It is used as an energy food in preparing special dishes like pancake, salad and so on. The objective of this paper is to investigate the socio-economic importance of honey among traditional healers and orthodox practitioners in Iwo Local Government Area of Osun State, Nigeria

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