“I haven’t noticed it for almost two years,” said Yinusa, who is in her sixties and learned the practice from her father as a teenager.
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Other medicinal plants, such as the prostrate Cyanthula, called sawerepepe and used to treat asthma, are also much rarer.
“Now, to get them, you have to go into the forests,” Yinusa said, explaining that it is much more difficult to locate sawerepepe because of deforestation around the city of Oyo.
Over the past decade, Nigeria’s classical medicinal plants have become much rarer, according to practitioners and researchers, with forest loss, overexploitation and more climate-related overclimate replacing important endangered species.
This poses a risk only to the careers of classical herbalists, Yinusa adds, and to the physical condition of their patients, but also to the culture and culture of the country.
Traditional medicine is the main source of physical care for 80% of the population, especially in rural areas, according to Nigeria’s Ministry of Health, and the World Health Organization (WHO) says the proportion is in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many Nigerians are unable or unable to access modern fitness facilities, which are sometimes limited by a lack of staff and investment, so at the point of the network they rely heavily on classical medicine.
But the shortage of medicinal plants is raising the demand for classic physical care for the public, while developing considerations about the quality of the solutions of choice.
“It’s a slippery slope matrix. . . Emerging costs (means) that many other people can’t do it, which is gradually cutting access to health care,” said Adelodun Majekobaje, a doctoral student at Louisiana State University. U. S.
“(And) when a specific medicinal plant is not available, classical doctors opt for an option they haven’t tried to see if it’s effective, making herbal medicines less effective,” the forest scientist added.
Deforestation
In the city of Osogbo, Osun state, just east of Oyo, classical practitioner Hossein Ajulo said he had also struggled to locate suitable plants in recent years.
There are “more and more difficulties in getting herbs. There are some that I still struggle to get in the city,” said the 32-year-old, who has practiced classical for a decade and, like Yinusa, learned the trade from her family.
“I have to get something now, or touch the grass pickers outside, and that wasn’t the case before,” he added.
Nigeria has over 8000 species of plants with medicinal benefits, and knowledge from the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 15 plant species in the country as critically endangered, 18 endangered and 146 endangered.
According to Adeniyi Jayeola, a professor of botany at the University of Ibadan in Oyo State, the most important thing is widespread deforestation driven by commercial development, followed by other things, adding to the effects of climate change.
Between 2001 and 2021, Nigeria lost 2. 8 million acres of tree cover, a low of 11 since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch, a tracking and data platform.
In 2018, the Nigerian said the country had lost 96% of its original forests due to deforestation.
But the challenge facing medicinal plants is even more important than that knowledge suggests, Jayeola said.
“Even the forests that still exist can no longer host many medicinal plants due to habitat fragmentation, which is now not unusual on the continent,” he said, explaining that some plants cannot thrive in destroyed forests.
Call for regulation
Several classical medicine practitioners said the cost of obtaining herbal remedies is higher for them because of plant shortages and the emerging costs of paying other people along the price chain, from creditors to distributors.
“Although we try not to increase the rate of drugs and remedies because we believe we are helping other people. There is a very significant change in price,” Yinusa said, adding that accumulation has averaged between 50 and 100 percent. during the beyond 4 years.
To address the shortage, Shaba Meikudi, president of the National Association of Traditional Medicine Practitioners, said the creation of new botanical gardens can ensure that “we can grow those medicinal plants that are being eliminated. “
Nigeria has 34 botanical gardens, the maximum of which are run by universities and government agencies, to plant species.
However, Jayeola, who also runs the botanical garden at the University of Ibadan, one of Nigeria’s oldest, said they were inadequate to cope with shortages of medicinal plants and for the advent of “extractive grasses”.
These gardens would be strictly designed for advertising purposes and would be used to grow endangered medicinal plants that classical practitioners can simply buy, Jayeola said, adding that such gardens have proven effective in South Africa.
The educator also suggested to the Nigerian government to plant a collection to protect biodiversity.
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“If you go through the forests, you will see trees dying, some practitioners have mistakenly debarked them,” Jayeola said.
“Unless there are procedures that consult this process, the medicine of certain plants will result in their death. “