The importance of medicinal plants to treat and manage childhood diseases in the North West Province, South Africa PLOSONE UniMpumalanga medicinal plants medicine disease diseases
By Neha MathurMar 30 2023Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc. In a recent article published in PLOS ONE, researchers conducted an ethnobotanical survey in the North West Province of South Africa between April and August 2021 among 101 participants using semi-structured face-to-face interviews to gather information regarding medicinal plants they used for treating common childhood diseases.
The team compiled data on 61 medicinal plants from 34 families, used for managing 29 childhood diseases falling under seven broad disease categories. Based on previously used ethnobotanical indices, they used three quantitative parameters, use-value , frequency of citation , and informed consensus factor , to analyze this data.
These plants were Aloe arborescens, Barleria macrostegia, Dichrostachys cinerea, Eucomis autumnalis, Hypoxis hemerocallidea, Solanum lichtensteinii, and Withania somnifera. Strikingly, ~89% of medicinal plants recorded in this survey were identified for the first time. Skin-related childhood diseases dominated the ICF category with an ICF value of 0.99. In addition, the ICF category had 381 use reports, constituting 55.7% of 61 plants recorded in this survey as herbal remedies for childhood diseases. From the ICF category, Bulbine frutescens and E. elephantina, were highly cited medicinal plants.
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