Herbal Medicine In Nigeria

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Phytomedicine is a word formed by adding the prefix Phyto- which denotes a plant to the conventional word which meaning of phytomedine as ‘Plant Medicine’. Plants are the richest resource of drugs in traditional systems of medicine, modern medicines, nutraceuticals, food supplements, folk medicines, pharmaceutical intermediates and chemical entities for synthetic drugs. The use of plant parts for medicinal purposes is an ancient practice which has become even more important in modern perspectives. In the last few years, there has been an exponential growth in the field of herbal medicine in some parts of Nigeria and other parts of the world. Following the support of World Health organization, (1993) to the use of efficacious and safe remedies…show more content…
In many developing countries; Indian for instance, more than 70%, approximately 1.1 billion population uses herbal drugs as an alternative to allopathic systems of medicine and currently there is an ongoing improvement program on local herbal drugs to meet international standard (Devasagayam et al., 2007). Therefore Nigeria like their counterpart needs to embrace this non-allopathic system of medicine by giving personal and governmental attention to traditional practitioners and their armamentarium of medicinal plant in other to meet health care…show more content…
The weed is called by many common names including, siam weed, devil weed, French weed, communist weed, hagonoy, cohoy (Grierson and Afolayan, 1999). The plant is commonly called “Awolowo” in Nigeria and other lauguages give it their specific names: ‘obu-inenawa’ by the Igbos and ‘ewe awolowo’ by the Yorubas. C. odorata is a scrambling perennial shrub, with straight, pithy, brittle stems which branch readily, bear three-veined, ovate-leaves placed oppositely, and with a shallow, fibrous root system (Plate 1). Capitula are borne in panicles at the ends of the branches and are devoid of ray florets. Flowering peaks in December–January in the northern hemisphere, the corollas of the florets vary between plants from white (Plate 2) to pale blue or lilac and achene are black with a pale pappus (Holm et al., 1977). In open-land situations, C. odorata grows to 2–3m in height, but it can reach up to 5–10m when supported by other vegetation (Holm et al., 1977). C. odorata grow vigorously throughout the wet season and flowering is initiated by a decrease in both day length and rainfall. It has been introduced through uncertain means into the tropical regions of Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. It is an aggressive competitor that occupies different types of lands including the ground floor of

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