Traditional and indigenous system of medicine in Nigeria

Abstract

Medicinal plants are very important to play a key role in human health worldwide. About 80% Africans are depending on traditional use of phytomedicine to cure dreaded diseases like malaria, HIV/AID, sickle cell anemia, yellow fever, diabetes and hypertension. An ethnomedical survey was conducted to document the ethno-medico-botanical knowledge in five villages of western part of Nigeria, especially in Yuroba land of Ogun State-Nigeria. It was surveyed for information on the experience, beliefs and convictions of the residents with respect to safety and efficacy of herbal medicines. This study aimed to establishing resourceful information for both phytochemical and pharmacological studies of the surveyed plants against their ethno-therapeutic claims, which yielded a total of 50 medicinal plants. Plants' habit/habitat of collection showed most of the plants as ubiquitously wild (79%) and herbaceous in nature (66%). Regular users of herbal remedies claimed that they had never experienced any form of poisoning, discomfort or contraindications from use of herbs. It is evident that medicinal plants are continuously being screened for their pharmacological properties and many interesting results with crude extracts have been obtained through the isolation and identification of the active principles. The idea of plant conservation was observed to be lacking. Hence there is a serious threat of decimation and depletion of such plants flora. Regional studies based on epidemiology revealed a record of 34 ailments, which responded as various therapeutic indications for the 50 plants surveyed. Most of the recipes involved a single plant with water and some local liquor as the common extractive solvent, while the mode of administration, dosage-regimens are großly unregulated and unstructured. It is concluded that information of this kind would be of benefit in general health care, ecological control, conservation and research into natural products that leading to drug discovery.