EXPLOITATION AND USE OF MEDICINAL PLANTS, NORTHERN REGION, GHANA

Abstract

The rural people in East Mamprusi district heavily depend on the vegetation around them for fuel wood and for medicine. The study identified the number of practicing herbalists in the study area, determined the medicinal plants and parts used in the area and the diseases/sicknesses they treat, identified rare medicinal plants in the study area, determined the forms medicinal plants are processed into for use and finally determined the challenges facing the herbalists. These were achieved through focus group discussion, direct personal observations and the administration of semi-structured questionnaire to 100 herbalists identified in eighteen (18) communities in the district. The study identified fifty-six (56) diseases to be treated by herbalists in the study area. The study also identified forty-seven (47) medicinal plants belonging to twenty-six different families. Plants parts identified to be mostly used for treatment included roots (25 species), leaves (22 species), barks (16 species), seeds (6 species), whole plant (6 species) and fruit (1 species). Twenty-one (21) plants were indicated to be rare in the study area by herbalists since they have to travel longer distances to harvest them for their herbal preparations. Medicinal plants were mostly processed into forms like powder, liquid and solid chips for treatment. Scarcity of some plant species, snakebites during harvesting of medicinal plants and difficulty in obtaining license for their operation were some of the challenges facing the herbalists in the study area. The result shows that there is considerable number of medicinal plants used for treating various diseases but the parts exploited for treatment and the methods used for exploiting them are not sustainable; hence herbalist complained of rareness of certain species. We therefore recommend that herbalists should be helped to establish medicinal plant garden to relief the pressure on the wild plants and also they should be cautious about harvesting techniques which leads to the total death of the plant.