Abstract
The most common ethnomedicinal plants being effective in respiratory disorders were studied for the first time in Bahawalpur District. The herbal medication represents a low-cost treatment for the local community. There is a need for documenting the traditional uses of plants for further investigation of bioactive compounds. Using a qualitative approach, the ethnobotanical data was collected from the district of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, from February 2018 to February 2020 through semistructured interviews with the local people and traditional healers. The quantitative analysis included use value, informant consensus factor, family importance value, and relative frequency citation. A total of 20 indigenous plants belonging to 17 families were documented from 185 informants. These plants were claimed to be used for the treatment of 10 respiratory ailments. The plant habit, part of the plant used, and mode of preparation were standardized for authentication. The herbs are the most used life form (55%), while trees and shrubs are also used. Leaves dominate with high use value (47.62%) followed by fruit, stem, flower, and other parts of plants. For the preparation of traditional remedies, decoction (76.19%) and extract (71.43%) are common preparation methods. However, other methods of paste infusion, powder juice, and ash are used to a lower extent. The plants with higher use value are Glycyrrhiza glabra, Acacia arabica, and Mentha piperita; these have significant potential therapeutic activity for respiratory disease. The ethnomedicinal importance of plants against respiratory diseases used by the local population (traditional healers) is the commercial availability of the herbal product. It is a first-time study in this area to fill the gap between traditional practices and synthetic medicine to screen out the phytochemical and pharmacological properties of plants that have a highly futuristic use value to develop antibiotic drug with least side effects by using sustainable methods.
Highlights
The ethnobotanical importance of medicinal plants predominantly serves to maintain public health from an era of time in many cultures and traditions around the world [1,2,3]
The majority of the population is living in rural areas, their source of income is based on agriculture, and their low economic livelihood is dependent on ethnomedicinal plants [9]
The demographic characters are designed in such a way that it showed the experience of the informant with plant species so that traditional healers were included in studies where 65% have 2–5-year experience; those having 5-10-year experience are 35%, while the most reported locals are under the age of 61-75 (35.1%) followed by the age of 46-60 (30.8%) and 3045 (21%), and the least are those with age above 75 years
Summary
The ethnobotanical importance of medicinal plants predominantly serves to maintain public health from an era of time in many cultures and traditions around the world [1,2,3]. It is noteworthy to say that the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that 80% of the global population is nutritionally dependent upon plants as a cure for primary health. The emerging importance of ethnic usage of medical treatment caused the side effects of allopathic medicine and their cost and unavailability of biomedical treatment due to some factors that were seriously urgent to the local community for the indigenous plant [6]. The geographical position of Pakistan makes this region supplemented with a diversity of medicinal plants used by the indigenous people for the medical care of their animals [7, 8]. The medicinal plant is locality matter as it is reported that about 90% of plant species are used by the natives [11]
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