Credit/WRITTEN BY:
Admasu Moges and Yohannes Moges
Submitted: January 16th, 2019 Reviewed: April 4th, 2019 Published: November 27th, 2019
Source:
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/66996
(IntechOpen)
1. Introduction
Medicinal plants are very vital in their uses for medication, besides providing ecological, economic, and cultural services. The world primary means of treating diseases and fighting infections have been based on the use of medicinal plants. From ancient times, plants have been rich sources of effective and safe medicines [1]. Globally, about 64% of the total world population is reliant on traditional medicine for their healthcare needs [2]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 3.5 billion people in developing countries including Ethiopia believe in the efficiency of plant remedies and use them regularly [3].
Ethiopia is located in the Horn of Africa between 3 and 15° northing, latitude, and 33 and 48° easting, longitude, and is also comprised of nine national regional states and two administrative states with varied agroecological zones. Since the country is characterized by a wide range of ecological, edaphic, and climatic condition, Ethiopia is also very diverse in its flora composition [4]. The flora of Ethiopia is estimated to contain close to 6500–7000 species including medicinal plants; of those, 12–19% are endemic to the country [5]. The medicinal plants have been used for various types of human and animal treatments in the country. According to [6, 7], in Ethiopia, about 80% of human population and 90% of livestock rely on traditional medicine. As also stated by many authors (e.g. [6, 7]), the medicinal plants have shown very effective medicinal values for some diseases of humans and livestock.
Even due to the trust of communities on medicinal values of traditional medicines, culturally associated traditions, and their relatively low cost, medicinal plants are highly demanded in Ethiopia [7]. Inadequate health centers and shortage of medicines and personnel in clinics might be the other reasons for driving the people of Ethiopia, in general, and the low-income community and the rural people, in particular, to the traditional health centers, whereby increasing the demand of medicinal plants.
However, these plants have got little attention regarding the documentation of scientific names, uses, ecology, and conservation in Ethiopia, in particular and world-wise, in general. Moreover, in Ethiopia, traditional medicine is faced with a problem of sustainability and continuity mainly due to the loss of taxa of medicinal plants [8, 9] besides having lack of quality control for herbal medicines. The main causes for the loss and decline of diversity of plants in Ethiopia are human-made factors [10, 11, 12]. Habitat destruction and deforestation for commercial timber and forest encroachment for urbanization, investment, agriculture, and other land uses are the major causes of the loss of many thousand hectares of forest that harbor medicinal plants yearly for the past several decades. In addition to these, the medicinal plant materials and associated traditional knowledge are being lost due to the lack of systematic conservation, research, proper utilization, and documentation [13]. The knowledge on identifying and managing the medicinal plants with their parts, use, and ecology is mostly associated with local and elder people, who transmitted their knowledge verbally. Such verbal transmissions of knowledge on medicinal plants have thus resulted in eroding and loss of knowledge and the plant materials as well. The quantity and quality of the safety and efficacy data on traditional medicine are also far from sufficient to meet the criteria needed to support its use worldwide [14]. Therefore, assessing and documenting the medicinal plants along with their useful medicinal parts, use, and ecology in Ethiopia, as well as revising the quality control for herbal materials and medicine, are very crucial for giving priority to their conservation and sustainable utilization.
