Assessment of Indigenous Knowledge on Using of Traditional Medicinal Plants to Cure Human Diseases in South Omo Zone Baka Dawla Ari District, Kure and Bitsmal South Ethiopia

This ethnobotanical study aims to investigate and document the indigenous knowledge on using traditional medicinal plants to cure human diseases in southern Ethiopia, south Omo zone Baka dawla Ari district at Kure and Bitsmal community. In this study, 77 plant species that belong to 68 genera and 35 plant families were identified by 110 local community members and 10 traditional healers of the study area to treat 32 human diseases. According to the analyzed result of the study three families (Lamiaceae, Solanaceae, and Fabaceae) are equally leading families each with nine species (11.69%) followed by Euphorbiaceae with five species (6.5%) and Asteraceae with four species (5.2%) in the study area. The result of this study also shows that most of the traditional medicines were taken in the mouth (oral) at 61.5% followed by topical (26,4%) and inhalation form (12.1%). The findings of this study show that most traditional plants were collected from the forest (45.5%) followed by the backyard (26%) and herbs are the most popular (59%) followed by shrubs (27%) plant habits. According to the result of this study, leaves are the dominant traditional medicinal plant parts used (55%) followed by roots (11.2%). preference ranking of medicinal plants in the study shows Solanum incanum ranked first indicating that it was the most effective in curing stomach pain followed by Verbena officinalis and the highest informant consensus factor value (0.57) was recorded by Malaria, Evil eye, snake bite, sudden disease categories.

Medicinal plants can be defined as plants that possess therapeutic properties or exert a beneficial pharmacological effect on the human or animal body [1]. While, traditional medicine is defined as an indigenous drug that is used to endure fitness by avoiding, diagnosing, and treating physical and psychological illnesses, and differs in its theories, beliefs, and knowledge from the modern [2]. Indigenous people have developed their locality-specific knowledge of plant use, management, and conservation [3]. (Medicinal plants have long been utilized in traditional medicine and worldwide ethno-medicine [4]. Traditional medicine has been used for many years with great contributions made by practitioners to human health, mostly as primary health care providers at the community level. In addition to its importance in health care, medicinal plants have enormous potential contributions to economic growth. The indigenous peoples of different areas have established their specific knowledge of plant resource uses, management, and conservation. As a result, indigenous medicine has become an essential part of many cultures in the world [5].

In Africa, traditional medicinal plants have been the basis of treatment of various diseases as well as other forms of treatment from varied cultures of the world. About 80% of the world’s population still depends solely on traditional or herbal medicine for the treatment of diseases, mostly in Africa and other developing nations [6]. Based on traditional medicine traditional healers, in Africa have detailed knowledge [7], which is moved orally from one generation to the next through professional healers, knowledgeable elders, and local people [8].

In Ethiopia, the mainstream of the people who live in the rural and the poor communities in urban areas rely mostly on traditional medicines to fulfill their main fitness needs [9]. Medicinal plants played an essential role in the treatment of numerous afflictions in Ethiopia [10]. Plant remedies are still the most important and sometimes the only source of healing for nearly 80% of humans and more than 90% of the livestock population. Estimated floras of 6500 to 7000 species of higher plants are medically important and out of these medicinal plants, 12% are endemic to Ethiopia [11]. Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants in Ethiopia is not compiled [12]. The traditional knowledge in Ethiopia is passed orally from one generation to the next and precious information can be lost because of the lack of transmission of this traditional medicinal plant knowledge [5]. As a result, the need to perform ethnobotanical research and to document the medicinal plants and the associated indigenous knowledge must be an urgent task [13]. Therefore, this study was stimulated to document the local community knowledge of the Baka Dawla Ari District kure-Bitsmal area on traditional medicinal plants.

Description of the study site

Baka Dawla Ari Woreda is located in the South Omo Zone of the southern region of Ethiopia. It is one of the newly formed woredas in the zone. It surrounds but does not include Jinka town, the capital of the South Omo Zone. The capital of the woreda is Arkisha Kaysa.

Administratively, the woreda is divided into eleven (11) rural and one (1) urban kebeles. All the Woreda sector offices use population data from the Woreda finance office. According to this data, the total population of the woreda is 82,997 (78,900 rural and 4,097 urban). The annual population growth rate of the woreda is 2.9%. There are 16,599 households in the woreda, with an average household size of 5 people.

Study site selection

A reconnaissance survey of the study was conducted on selected kebeles of Baka Dawla Ari woreda with the endorsement of the woreda stakeholders. So, the study was carried out on Kure and Bitsmal communities.

Participants selections

With the help of stakeholders of the woreda for this study 110 local people and 10 well-known traditional healers of four age groups (36-45, 46-55, 56-65, 66 and above) 30 participants from each age group entirely 120 adult participants were selected and interviewed as key informants.

Ethnobotanical data collection

Both quantitative and qualitative ethnobotanical data were collected founded on descriptive field survey design and it emphasized names of medicinal plants, habitats habits, plant parts used, disease cured, and ways of preparation.

Specimen of plant collection and identification

The specimens cited for their medicinal use were collected from home gardens and natural vegetation then coded, pressed, and dried for identification. During the field walks all of the information about the plant was listed and identification was done by using various volumes of the Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea [14], and with the help of experts from the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute.

Data analysis

The collected ethnobotanical data was passed into an Excel spreadsheet in 2007 and shown by using descriptive statistical approaches like frequency, percentage, graphs, and tables. Preference ranking was calculated by following [15] to assess the degree of efficiency of certain curative plants against the most predominant illnesses in the study site. Priority position of issues is apparent as pressures to medicinal plants built on their level of critical properties (values 1-5 were given: 1 is the least destructive threat, and 5 is the most destructive threat). The Informant consensus factor (ICF) was designed for each group to classify the agreements of the informers on the stated cures for the cluster of diseases. The ICF was intended as follows [16].

$ICF=\frac{\text{Nur}-\text{Nt}}{\text{Nur}-1}$

Were, ICF: Informant Consensus Factor; Nur: Number of use citations in each category; Nt: Number of species used.

Habitats of medicinal plants

In this study, 77 plant species that belong to 68 genera and 35 plant families were used by the local community of the study area to treat 32 human diseases (Table 1). The top three families (Lamiaceae, Solanaceae, and Fabaceae) are equally leading families each with nine species (11.69%) followed by Euphorbiaceae with five species (6.5%) and Asteraceae with four species (5.2%) in the study area. The finding of this result was agreed with the result of [17] in which Fabaceae and Lamiaceae were the dominant medicinal plant families collected. Also as illustrated in Table 1, most of the traditional medicines were taken in the mouth(oral) at 61.5% followed by topical (26,4%) and inhalation forms (12.1%).

Medicinal plants habitats, habits and used parts

Medicinal plant habitats: According to the result of this study shown in Table 2, medicinal plants collected from the forest were ranked first (45.5%) followed by backyard (26%) in the study area. This result indicates that wild plants are a major source of traditional medicinal plants. Also, the findings of this study agreed with the findings reported by [18].

Medicinal plant habits: The results of this study show Figure 1 that in the study area, most of the traditional medicinal plants were herbs (59%) followed by shrubs (27%), and trees (14%). These findings are similar to the findings reported by [19] that indicate herbs were the most frequently used plant categories.

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Figure 1: Habits of Traditional Medicinal Plants.

Medicinal plants used parts: According to the result displayed in Figure 2, leaves are the dominant medicinal plant part used and it scored 49 (55.%) of the medicinal plants followed by roots (11.2%) in the study site. The findings of this study agreed with the findings of several studies [20-24] in those leaves that scored the highest percentage used medicinal plant parts.

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Figure 2: Traditional medicinal plants are used.

Preference ranking of medicinal plants

Preference ranking of medicinal plants for effective treatments of stomach pain is shown in Table 3, eight medicinal plants were mentioned for active treatments of stomach pain by ten key informants. According to the conducted report stomach pain was a popular disease that was cured by traditional medicinal plants. As a result of a comparison report of key informants Solanum incanum ranked first indicating that it was the most effective in curing stomach pain followed by Verbena officinalis.

The informant consensus factor

The Informant consensus factor results as shown in Table 4, ranges from 0.39 -0.57 per disease category. The ICF provides a range of zero to one where a high-value performance is good for a high rate of informant consensus. Malaria, Evil eye, snakebite, and sudden disses categories have the highest informant consensus factor values (0.57). This result indicates that those medicinal plant species used to treat these disease categories help with specific health problems and need to be very careful extra pharm logical studies.

According to the findings of this study most of the traditional medicinal plants were collected from the forest/ wild/source. Therefore, forests are the best source of traditional medicinal plants so the forest( Mago National Park buffer zone) found near the study area reaches these traditional medicinal plants and the Baka Dawla Ari district especially the Kure and Bitsmal sites is very rich in traditional medicinal plants and also the community has long-lasting experience on using traditional medicinal plants for their healthcare so, the author highly recommends that working additional investigation can be very important to the local community as well as for our countries in the field of community health center.

I would like to express my internal appreciation and gratitude to Enhanced Management and Enforcement of Ethiopia’s Protected Area Estate Project of Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, and Hawassa Biodiversity Center for their support in materials and finance during data collection Also. I wish to thank Baka Dawla Ari woreda especially, Kure and Bitsmal traditional healers and ethnic groups for sharing valuable Indigenous knowledge on using medicinal plants during data collection.

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