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Ethno Med, 12(4): 244-252 (2018)
DOI:11.258359/KRE-165
© Kamla-Raj 2018
The Contributions of Information Management in Promoting
Indigenous Medicine Use to Enhance Public Healthcare Systems
Patrick Ajibade
University of Fort Hare, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Department of Information Science, Private Bag X1314, Alice 5700, South Africa
E-mail: <ajibadep@ufh.ac.za>, <ajibadep.sa@gmail.com>
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8608-8378
KEYWORDS Clinical Trial Information. Herbs Effectiveness Information. Information Packaging and
Dissemination. Biodiversity. Indeginous Knowledge Management Systems. Lack of Information
ABSTRACT This paper debates the contributions of an efficient information management in promoting the use
of indigenous plants and ethnomedicinal treatment that is capable of preventing diseases as alternative ways to
improve public healthcare systems deliveries. Africa is rich in ethnopharmacological products, but lack of clinical
information on its effectiveness, dosage, and success rate in treatments is hindering its use to promote public
healthcare deliveries. There are products for curing diabetes, blood poising, malaria, bacteria and fungi infections
but these products are not known to most people because of lack of sufficient information dissemination of the
products. The paper used bibliometrics survey techniques, observation through interactions with vendors, and uses
of medicinal plants to gather data. Findings showed increase in academic publications of uses of indigenous plants,
but this information is not available to most people. There is no accessible information to establish herbal products
quality and efficacies of the products and most vendors do not have sufficient information to educate the users.
Some orthodox health workers are willing to provide information on the use of herbal products with conventional
medical treatments. The challenges identified include the following: Lack of regulatory body to inspect and test the
efficacies of the products, information on dosage administration is not available. There is lack of access to
information on products and ailment classification, no online sources to get clinical trial data and information on
products success rate is not available to the public. The paper recommends that government must provide
screening facilities to eliminate pathogens and toxic substances in plants, and help in publishing information on
products that are effective and safe for use.
INTRODUCTION
Healthcare deliveries in African continent
have been under tremendous pressure for peo-
ple to get access to quality healthcare services
and treatments that enhance and improve their
quality of life. Ethno-pharmacological uses of
various plants and herbs have been studied in
Nigeria and South Africa (Attah et al. 2016). The
term “ethnopharmacology” in this paper refers
to the use of local sources of indigenous plants
and herbs that is commonly used as sources of
treatment of illnesses and/or as being used as
an antiseptic for treating wounds. In various eth-
nic communities, plants are often used to treat
wide range of illnesses. Plants and herbs are
useful for curing a stomach ache, food poison-
ing, skin diseases, and sexual health and fertility
problems are amongst 122 treatments examined
in South Africa by Williams and Whiting (2016).
Efficacies of indigenous herbal treatment through
ethnomedicinal method have been documented
as antibacterial treatments in Nigeria (Ogbole et
al. 2018) and as a preventive antidote for fungi
infections in babies’ respiratory tracts (Etim et
al. 2016). Medicinal plants such as “Oruwo -
Morinda lucida”, “Ahun – Alstonia boonei”, and
most popular in the Yoruba land of western Ni-
geria for treating malaria “Dongoyaro – Aza-
dirachta indica” have potent properties for treat-
ing malaria (Asnake et al. 2016; Emmanuel et al.
2016; Odugbemi et al. 2007). However, informa-
tion about these plants and its usefulness are
not known to the public across the continent.
Furthermore, there are other medicinal plants that
have been screened for its antioxidant activities
and potential disease management (Nwidu et al.
2016). One of the reasons the plants must be
Address for correspondence:
Patrick Ajibade, Ph.D.
NIHSS Scholar,
Department of Information Science,
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
University of Fort Hare,
Private Bag X1314, Alice 5700, South Africa
E-mail: ajibadep@ufh.ac.za, ajibadep.sa@gmail.com
EFFICIENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OF INDIGENOUS MEDICINE 245
screened is to eliminate toxic substances and
separate potent remedies that may be used for
treatment, as well as to provide clinical informa-
tion and displaying possible side effects for dif-
ferent categories of people such as infants, aged
and pregnant users. Medicinal plants have
shown significant potencies in the treatment of
various diseases and illnesses such as respira-
tory and blood infections. Indigenous plants and
herbs are useful and have been reported effica-
cious for preventive and curative purposes such
as preventing diarrhoea (de Wet et al. 2010; Se-
menya and Maroyi 2012), antimalarial drugs
(Odugbemi et al. 2007) and treat sexually trans-
mitted infections (de wet et al. 2012), respiratory
infections (York et al. 2011), treatment of skin
disorder and hypertension (de Wet et al. 2013;
de Wet et al. 2016). Despite the potential suc-
cessful use of these medicinal plants, lack of
information on the treatment potentials and side
effects are not readily available to ordinary con-
sumers. It was stated that there is insufficient
information and under-reporting of uses of in-
digenous and medicinal herbs in Africa (Aso-
wata-Ayodele et al. 2016) for various uses and
this lack of information is counterproductive for
full appreciation of African rich biodiversity. Lack
of information implies that African communities
where these plants are found may not be able to
own or claim the intellectual properties of these
potent alternative medicines for treatments for
primary healthcare. However, registering and
providing information on the owners of the in-
tellectual properties allows the host communi-
ties and government to receive recognition of
their products, and breakthrough emanating from
the plants uses as well as perpetual royalties for
the products ingenuity.
Problem Statement
The quantity and quality of public informa-
tion on organic herbs and medicinal plants as
means of improving public healthcare system is
essential as the majority of people prefers this
means of public health remedy. Although some
people believe that ethnomedicine is effective
in the treatment of diseases, one of the prob-
lems remains constant lack of information on
how some of the products are processed, and
procedure of treatments, dosage, treatment du-
ration, side effects and clinical trials information
for the public. Even though people attached
huge significance to the ethnomedicine as an
alternative way to combat epidemic phenome-
non attacking human health in the recent years,
but lack of information on facilities to screen
products being sold to users remain a problem.
In the past, societies applaud our forefather’s
fitness vis-à-vis this modern era adolescent psy-
chosomatic or mental agility of an adolescent
which seemed could not withstand strenuous en-
vironment for a long period. However, some plants
are useful for maintaining vigour and treating lack
of concentration and shallow thinking which may
be the inability of the students to study for an
extended period, because interactions between
human mind and body are not synchronised. Ac-
creditation of alternative primary healthcare giv-
ers and the potencies of their medicine have not
been well established or catalogued. There is still
lack of nexus between traditional and scientific
approaches for testing herbal treatments and po-
tencies of traditional plants that exist within most
African communities and inaccessible dosage
administration information is one of the hurdles
that must be eliminated. Furthermore, it appears
there is a lack of regulatory framework to guide
how information on plants that are used for treat-
ments are packaged as most traditional medicines
being sold across the streets are not labelled, and
information provided by the vendors have not be
verified by any institutions or agencies.
However, the lack of information dissemina-
tion is one of the significant challenges inhibit-
ing acceptance and use of ethnomedicine by
the majority of the educated public in Nigeria
and South Africa. Acceptance and use of ethno-
medicine as an alternative source of treatment
have not been promoted, yet people need clini-
cal information. As it was reported that “tradi-
tional medicine clinical” information must be reg-
ularly updated (Mahomoodally et al. 2016: 20)
as the quality of information provided may in-
fluence the behaviour of users and patient.
“There is usually a lack of dosage instructions
to guide patients to avoid toxicity” (Mahomood-
ally et al. 2016: 20). Hence, appropriate, well-pack-
aged information must be debated as one of the
potential barriers to the success of ethnomedic-
inal uses. It was established that doctors and
nurses that recommended traditional medical
treatments to their patients “expressed a need
to have access to more information and for pa-
tients to seek medical advice before trying alter-
native therapy” (Mahomoodally et al. 2016: 21),
but the information must be simply packaged in
such a way that it is easy for the people to un-
derstand its usefulness (Kang’ethe and Ajibade
2016). However, there is still limited information
on diseases and credibly documented informa-
tion on available traditional treatments. Also, to
246 PATRICK AJIBADE
substantiate the need for accessible information,
a study carried out in Rwanda pointed out that,
“there is a lack of epidemiological information
on Type 1 diabetes (T1DM) in Africa” (Marshall
et al. 2016: 2). It is against this background that
this paper attempted to advocate improved ways
of managing relevant information on local plants
and herbs as a panacea to improve public per-
ceptions towards the efficacies of the natural
methods of health-related treatment deliveries.
METHODOLOGY
The paper carried out a bibliometrics survey
which is an analysis of some publications on a
subject to uncover information governance pat-
terns and trends of publications, in this case on
ethnomedicine and natural herbs as preventive
and curative treatments strategies. The justifi-
cation for using bibliometrics technique was the
ability to review collections of relevant articles
that have been published and aggregated on
various databases on the subject of interest. The
paper used five information retrieval techniques
to filter and delineate the total recall and preci-
sion ratio of relevant results on scholarly arti-
cles indexed on multiple scholarly databases.
Since the limitation of using a single database is
that, other articles and sources that is not in-
dexed in their databases will not be retrieved,
and this will present biases as this will consti-
tute data sampling exclusion criteria. However,
the Google scholar cannot be classified as a sin-
gle database, since it is a metadata crawler/soft-
ware capabilities to aggregate and retrieve in-
formation from various scholarly databases such
as journals and books publishers, as well as uni-
versities repositories indexes and platforms that
are linked to the internet such as; e-print, digital
commons and other institutions that use DSpace
software to host their work. The retrieval soft-
ware also returns searches on the established
journal publishers hosting services databases
of Scopus, Highwire, Press, and MetaPress. Fur-
thermore, it contained contents and articles ag-
gregators that host journal on their e-platform;
JSTOR, ScieELO and other scholarly web inter-
faces such as Open Journal Systems.
OBSERVATIONS AND DISCUSSION
Public Health Contribution
Some authorities are responsible for public
health and their ability to guarantee quality as-
surance can unprecedentedly sway the ethno-
medicine sceptics to reconsider stance on the
usefulness and acceptance of natural herbs as
effective alternative treatments. Thus, it is es-
sential to propagate an improved information
packaging and dissemination channels on the
efficacy and the use of traditional herbs which
may improve patient behaviour towards the use
of herbal medicines to curb HIV prevalence
(Friend-du Preez et al. 2015; Kang’ethe and Aji-
bade 2016). It is imperative to gain public confi-
dence, but this can be improved if herbal prod-
ucts standardisation can be achieved as a sign
of quality assurance. This will entail that prod-
uct sampling and quality control mechanism be
established, and subsequent trials are conduct-
ed on patients and the medicine after that, prod-
ucts should be issued with a certificate of po-
tency based on the merit of the experimental re-
sults. For example, in South Africa with a high
rate of HIV infections and other diseases such
as malaria and yellow fever in other parts of the
continent, there are assumptions that potent
herbal remedies might be available to cure some
of these illnesses such as announced in Nigeria
by “Dr Abalaka’s” claim on HIV cure. Yet, there
were no procedures to investigate the claims or
published information to validate the veracity
of the claim or information provided. There is
lack of institutionalising procedure and infor-
mation governance to connect the “ethnic-cen-
tric” locally sourced natural remedies and medi-
cation with patients that may need such herbal
treatments. However, those who might want to
use this alternative therapy, or natural products
are not enlightened due to lack of inaccessible
information, yet most of the educated people
want a definitive proof of such drugs potency
and its safe consumption guaranteed. It has
been established that traditional medicine has
been administered concurrently with ART in
Durban South Africa (Appelbaum et al. 2015).
However, the public may not be able to benefit
without sound and published clinical results
based on tests carried out on the medicine with
improved success-rate information made avail-
able to them. It is becoming particularly impor-
tant in this era where appreciation of traditional
medicine has increased as necessary medical
treatments (Mohankumar and McFarlane 2015),
as traditional plants have been reportedly used
in Venda to treat candidiasis-related infections
(Masevhe et al. 2015). Similarly, in Nigeria,
EFFICIENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OF INDIGENOUS MEDICINE 247
“ataare” – Aframomum melegueta (alligator pep-
per) is used continuously for local soup which
is reported to be useful in managing diabetes,
and it also contained anti fungi and antibacteri-
al, antiviral properties, and it can be used to re-
duce cholesterol levels (Ene-Obong et al. 2018).
Information Packaging on Ethnomedicine
Potency and Dosage
One of the current challenges in the use of
traditional herbs and herbal products in Africa
is the lack of structured and reliable sources of
information on herbal products. The results of
the prevailing trends and success rates of herb-
al products that have been empirically tested
and information on the dosage administration
of such herbal products is not readily available.
The current approach allows individual with
products to sell and prescribe dosage with little
knowledge on how to verify the potencies level
of the products. Dosage administration is very
critical in case of any potential adverse effects
resulting from overdose and the implication on
individuals due to body physiology or different
body anatomy or immune system. Since dosage
administers to patient “A” could prove fatal to
patient “B” when the same dosage is adminis-
tered, which is why a process should be estab-
lished to package local medicinal drugs. Unfor-
tunately, little emphasis is placed on dosage
administrations for various categories of indi-
vidual, since body mass is not the same. Find-
ings from South Africa on traditional medicine
uses examined and categorized 122 different
uses, but dosage of administration was not pro-
vided, and this was stated thus; “we were only
able to gather data on their perceived uses and
no data on dosages, efficacy, or individual turn-
over of products” Williams and Whiting (2016:
265).
Furthermore, the findings of Williams and
Whiting (2016) indicated that the traditional prod-
ucts obtained from the herbal market in South
Africa were tested, but it involved animals use.
The use was examined, and it is a known fact
that animal resistance level is higher than most
humans. Peradventure the dosage is adminis-
tered ignorantly by a human without proper in-
formation packaging and dosage administration
which could result in fatal outcome. Dosage in-
formation examination must be a prerequisite for
traditional active ingredient intake as an over-
dose may lead to toxicity implications as find-
ings show lack of information governance on
the most product on the streets. As finding in
South Africa reported “another ethnomedicine
with active ingredients, this time, dangerous and
potentially fatal, found in the blister beetle
(Mylabris sp)” which is one of the products in
the local herbs and plants being sold in the mar-
ket (Williams and Whiting 2016: 266). Despite all
these beneficial effects of the traditional means
of primary healthcare and wellness, lack of regu-
lated information and essential information pack-
aging poses a serious threat to wider acceptance
amongst the most elite population in Africa. So
far, it was reported that traditional medicines and
herbal products have not be regulated, even
though some of the practices require stringent
regulations (Daghman 2016). For the reason that
regulatory or government oversight will protect
consumers from consuming local medicine with
little or no power to cure or manage illnesses
why customers may have been cheated to pur-
chase such medicine. Moreover, herbal medi-
cines may not entirely be used to treat diabetes,
while a fictitious vendor may be claiming such
curative potencies of their herbal products. How-
ever, providing information on the number of
people that have used the products and their
health report as a result of taking a particular
herbal medicine should be available, while gov-
ernment must assist in testing or running the
clinical analysis of such products for making
the information accessible to the public. Ortho-
dox drugs and herbal product combination for
treating patients may be exploited if clinical or
trials information of herbal products are evalu-
ated and made public which may be used to pro-
mote public health system deliveries. Many com-
panies claim to be selling herbal medicines, but
these may be just marketing strategies to in-
crease sales. It is important to be able to read
labels correctly so that patients are not misguid-
ed (Mahomoodally et al. 2016: 20).
Nexus between Empirical Data and Social
Reality
Based on the available data, it is clear that
focus is on the ways to best utilise natural rich-
es of herbs found in Africa and herbal products
as therapeutic and preventive medicine by cus-
tomers. It is of vital importance not to get carried
away by the number of the available publica-
248 PATRICK AJIBADE
tions, but the application of the knowledge to
solve day to day health challenges and how the
products can complement the existing health-
care products and treatments. The data in Table
1 indicated the increase in publications on the
importance and use of indigenous herbal plants.
However, there is lack of information regarding
the products being sold daily in the streets with-
out sufficient data concerning the effectiveness
and clinical data about the sources of the plants
and herbs. Also, it appears that the vendors are
not equipped to educate the users about prod-
ucts effectiveness, dosage, the level of toxicity
(if any), and likely side-effects for various age
groups and people living with special conditions.
Since the year 1990 till date, the upward trac-
tion of the findings suggests that herbal or tra-
ditional medicine users have come to appreciate
the contribution of the ethnomedicinal products
as a nexus between healthy living by using herbs
and plants for treating ailments. However, from
the result in (Fig. 1), the gaps that have not
been adequately covered in solving the current
challenges is the issue of quality control and
verification of potencies of the medicinal plant’s
products that have been presented to customers
or individual using these products. Although from
2011 to 2015, findings indicated that 3,870 publi-
cations have emerged in South African context,
but what is lacking is information on the poten-
cies and efficacies of the products drawn from
the actual patients who have used the natural
medicinal products. The other concern is the
quality assurance from any regulatory body to
succinctly verify claims of potency by the indi-
vidual whether uttermost hygiene has been ob-
served in collecting, processing and prepara-
tion of the products. It is apparent that data and
Table 1: Search phrases on ethnomedicine publications and retrieval techniques used, and the numbers
of returns
Year of publication Construct variables Filtering techniques Total recall
1990-1995 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 124
1996-2000 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 384
2000-2005 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 528
2006-2010 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 1600
2011-2015 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 3870
2016 “Ethno-medicine” south Africa Truncation/ Boolean 459
Total Recall 6,965
Source: Author
Fig. 1. Publications on ethnomedicinal studies from 1990- 2016 (contextually in South Africa)
Source: Author
Ethno-medicine Publication Trends in South Africa
Total Recall
2011-2015,
3870
2006-2010,
1600
2015, 459
2000-2005, 5281996-2000, 384
1990-1995, 124
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
EFFICIENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OF INDIGENOUS MEDICINE 249
information derived from the practical use from
local medicine users who have been cured or
those who are using the products to manage
their health consistently will provide vital infor-
mation necessary to inform the public. But, there
is still lack of verifiable information on most of
the products being sold to the people on the
streets. However, there are some well-packaged
herbal products in the most chemist and phar-
macist outlets in South Africa, but there are dis-
claimers indicating that some of them had not
been clinically tested or recommended for treat-
ment by the medical institutions.
Comparatively, the data on the ethnomedi-
cine in Nigeria is lower than the findings in South
Africa. There are different “alagbo” (local herbs
vendors) and herbal production in Nigeria. Some
of the vendors have a common marketplace at
Ojoo market, Sango market, “Oja Bodija”, “Ag-
beni Ogunpa” market just to name but few with-
in Ibadan metropolitan area. Some of the ven-
dors sell “agunmu” (dried herbs) and herbal
products that have been processed into powder
forms that can be taken with “ogi” soft pap made
from corn starch, or any other edible liquid drink.
The ethnomedicinal publications and articles
have experienced steady increases in Nigeria as
can be seen in Table 2 from 2011 and 2015. Al-
though the abundance of people hawking herb-
al products in Nigeria, not all the “agbo” or
“agunmu (dried medicinal extracts)” being
hawked on the streets are very helpful or seemed
to present results that have been promised by
the vendors at times, with exceptions to some
regular vendors one usually consult for pur-
chase. Often, people refer their loved ones to
consult some vendors they have tried their prod-
ucts, and most information is spread through
(words of mouth) before one purchase herbs
“agbo” from hawkers on the streets in Nigeria.
Often, the quality assurance of most of the herbal
products is based on testimonials and recom-
mendation from relatives or colleagues who have
used the products. This is necessary because
of fear of consuming products that may be po-
tentially fatal and poses health risks arising from
using herbal products which have not been test-
ed or in which level of toxicity is not known. The
data in Table 2 present the peer reviewed arti-
cles on ethnomedicine importance in Nigeria but
there is still lack of information on products, and
use for users on the streets from vendors.
There is a need to accomplish more in the
continent in the area of promoting products and
services as significant products that may be
useful for various purposes in the continents
are not professionally packaged and made avail-
able online. Cataloguing this products informa-
tion online and its effectiveness in treating
health-related problems may encourage patient
globally to access the products, which in return
will increase the economic advantage for the ven-
dors. However, the increase in the number of
articles published in Nigeria (see Fig. 2) does
not reflect a proportionate amount of informa-
tion available to daily users since the informa-
tion is packaged for the scientific communities.
However, the government should mandate in-
formation packaging and dissemination for av-
erage users about the screening, processing, and
effectiveness of medicinal plants which is being
sold in the markets to the public.
Furthermore, a lot needs to be achieved in
Nigeria as available data showed that South Af-
rica is ahead of Nigeria based on empirical stud-
ies conducted or retrieved through this online
platforms. In 2011 to 2015 alone, Nigeria’s pub-
lished work were 2,680 as against 3,870 in South
Table 2: Search phrases on ethnomedicine publications and retrieval techniques used, and the numbers
of returns
Year of publication Construct variables Filtering techniques Total recall
1990-1995 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 128
1996 -2000 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 183
2001-2005 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 286
2006-2010 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 925
2011-2015 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 2,680
2016 “Ethno-medicine” Nigeria Truncation/ Boolean 290
Total Recall 4492
Source: Author
250 PATRICK AJIBADE
Africa. While it is not enough to draw a quanti-
tative comparison, yet, it is a clear pattern that
information governance on the human use and
application, dosage administration is lacking. An-
other pattern synonymous with both countries
is a lack of well-structured information on sourc-
ing this alternative treatment products and qual-
ity assurance on clinical human use/test results
on the efficacies of these products have not been
established. However, the government must es-
tablish institutes that could assist local farmers,
communities to document and provide informa-
tion on phytochemical analysis of their locally
sourced products and how the communities use
their plants. The analysis and information on
the products can be further screened for patho-
gens, toxic properties as well as providing clini-
cal tests information for potential users, as this
will improve confidence in the user while pro-
viding alternative economic activities for the
people and reduce Africa’s dependence on chem-
ical-based drugs from giant drugs corporations.
CONCLUSION
The paper concluded that some success had
been achieved in the field of traditional medi-
cine as an alternative trajectory to serve as pri-
mary healthcare services in various societies. It
is notable that the public and research interest
in this area is gaining more ground in finding a
solution and documenting the potencies of the
African herbal products in treating different ail-
ments. The other successes recorded are the
combination of the ethnomedicinal treatments,
acceptance, and recommendation by mainstream
health workers and orthodox doctors and nurs-
es to their patients. However, the primary con-
straint inhibiting wider public acceptability as
for day to day point of references for treatment
is the lack of regulatory and standardisation pro-
cedures. There have not been sufficient clinical
trials known to the public with the actual suc-
cess rates recorded in the results even though
the number of publications in the recent years
has tremendously improved and various uses
of indigenous plants and herbs have been es-
tablished and documented. Lack of information
regarding monitored trials on human patients
and unavailability of dosage administration have
posed as major challenges. Information gover-
nance on traditional herbs/plants quality assur-
ance is not readily available and success rate of
locally sourced and processed herbal medicine
information is not aggregated, indexed and made
available online. The implication of this lack of
information for the public primary healthcare sys-
tem is that the citizen who is desperately in need
of help may not be able to access this information
because there is no information available that can
be used to make informed decisions.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The paper recommends that government can
play a significant role to help an individual with
potent traditional treatment ingredient to facili-
tate and monitor trials and dosage administra-
Fig. 2. Ethnomedicinal studies publications from 1990- 2016 (in Nigeria)
Source: Author
Year of Publication
Linear (Year of Publication)
Linear (Total Recall)
Total Recall
2 per. Mov. Avt. (Year of Publication)
Expon. (Total Recall)
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
-500
-1000
Number of publication
2680
290
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
EFFICIENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OF INDIGENOUS MEDICINE 251
tion to the patient. The success rate and poten-
cies of tested ethnomedicine should be docu-
mented and made available to techno-savvy
generation in this information age. It is possible
that broader coverage of information packaging
and dissemination on the efficacies of ethno-
medicine will create a wider public acceptance
as source of viable primary/public healthcare
services. The government can establish a body
responsible for quality assurance of the tradi-
tional medicines and herbs, which will in the long
run increase patronage and the use of ethno-
medicine and an improved income generation
for the stakeholder and the economy. The paper
recommends that in Africa, the focus should be
shifted from theoretical, ethnomedicinal tacit
knowledge and information packaging to practi-
cal, tested experimental use as this will improve
public confidence and adoption side by side the
orthodox medical treatments.
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Paper received for publiation on July 2017
Paper accepted for publication on May 2018
