Ethnobotanical survey of plants traditionally used for malaria prevention and treatment in indigenous villages of Tepi Town South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Increased resistance to insecticides and established drugs by malaria vectors necessitate the search for alternative cost-effective malaria control tools in the Ethiopia. Traditional remedies are the most important source of therapeutics of the population and more than 85% of the traditional medical preparations in Ethiopia are of plant origin. As the Ethiopian indigenous medicinal plants' knowledge and diversity is vulnerable to be lost continuous documentation and preservation of traditional knowledge and the plant species is a priority. Thus, we report an ethnobotanical survey of plants traditionally used for malaria prevention and treatment in an indigenous villages of Tepi town south western Ethiopia. To document anti-malarial plant traditional knowledge and determine level of utilization for prevention and treatment of malaria by households, 40 household heads were surveyed by snow ball sampling of which eight household heads addressed by systematic purposive sampling were traditional healers. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were analyzed using SPSS version 20. A total of twenty five plant species belonging to twenty two families have been reported. The most cited plant species for malaria prevention by healers were Cyperus species (52.11%), Allium sativum L. (24.15%), Lepidium sativum L. (9.34%) and Echinops kebericho Mesfin. (7.82%). This study has documented more anti-malarial plant species to be used in the indigenous village. The existing medicinal plant species and the indigenous knowledge on traditional medicinal plants in the study area were under serious threat and were at risk of getting lost. Therefore, urgently warrant sustainable conservation and further research is needed. Key words: Indigenous knowledge, malaria vectors, medicinal plants.