Knowledge and Use of Medicinal Traditional Plant Species Ailments in Haramaya, Ethiopia

The purpose of this research was to identify the medicinal plants and anal-yse local knowledge regarding the use of plants for the treatment and prevention of various human ailments in socio-cultural groups, namely in the peoples of Haramaya, East Harerge, Ethiopia by answering research questions: What were the requirements of the users in filling existing gap in knowledge regarding the traditional medicinal plants? What are the traditional medicinal plants species used as a primary healthcare? Which parts of traditional medicinal plants are used as a primary health care? How does the medicinal plant products are operated by healers? Data was selected from Haramaya District, HarargeZone, East Ethiopia from September 2016 to July 2017thedata were collected from 30 randomly selected traditional plant healer’s using semi-structured interviews and participants observation. The traditional plant species healers were involved in the study were male and female and also their ages range from 25 -95. Interviews were made with each traditional healer about the knowledge and use of medicinal plant species used to treat human diseases in the study area. 22 medicinal plant species were used as cure for 30 ailments. From these, 100 species were recorded for the treatment of human health problems, from the total medicinal Plants. The most frequently used plant parts were leaves (31%), seeds (27%), seeds and fruits (3.5%) fruits (3.5%), steam (10.35%), roots (6.7%), jelly of the steam (3.5%), flowers (3.5%), leave bud (3.5%), leaves and roots (3.5%) and terminal bud (3.5%). The most widely used method of preparation was crushing (26.80%) of the different plant parts followed by squeezing (22.68%) and burning (7.21%). The common route of administration recorded was oral (52.01%) followed by dermal (28.52%) and nasal (8.3%). The most commonly used application of medicinal plant was drinking (43.37%) followed by painting (10.84%) and put on and washing accounted for 10.84%. No significant correlation was observed between the age of traditional remedy and the number of species reported and the indigenous knowledge transfer was found to be similar. More than one medicinal plants species were used more frequently than the use of a single species for remedy preparation. Plant parts used for remedy preparations showed significant difference with medicinal plant species abundance in the study area