Assessing the use of Traditional Medecine in Oral Health Care

Lingondo Simon Mwambo ¹, Dr Forcham Emmanuel Duna^*

1) BDSC, M.A, MSc., MPS (Oral Surgery), CAIE, CDS, PGCERT (Applied and Computational Mathematics).

*Correspondence to: Dr Forcham Emmanuel Duna Senior Lecturer, researcher and HND Exam Coordinator. Address : Catholic University of Cameroon, Bamenda, school of health and medical sciences and university of Buea, department of microbiology and parasitology.

Copyright.

© 2025 Dr Forcham Emmanuel Duna This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: 16 Jan 2025

Published: 14 Feb 2025   

ABSTRACT

This research is carried out on the use of traditional medicine in oral healthcare in the MBOH NSO village of BUI D IVISION in the North West region and the BALEVENG village of Cameroon as from the 23 December to the 28 of December 2010.  This study aims at assessing the use of traditional medicine in oral healthcare with the aim of  knowing those  plants used by traditional healers in treating oral health problems ;knowing  the various ailments treated ,their methods or forms preparation, methods of administration ,parts used and cost of treatment with their scientific and common names of the plants mentioned.        

The research team used the cross sectional design and data collected through structured interview by the use of questionnaire. The sample size was to get 20 medicinal plants from the two study areas ,the team hypothesizes  that traditional healers offer relatively cheap treatment; that they treat from signs and symptoms without treating the source with the treatment duration dosage depending on patients complain, But surprisingly ,the team discovered that some of these treatments were very cheap as payments could be done with salt ,or palm oil while on the other hand, some treatments were  very expensive as a sum of 1000frs CFA plus a fowl and palm wine  were  required. Furthermore, the team realised 25 plants and also that the healers  had no specific dosage and duration of treatment for each ailment treated  and the source was never their concerned.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter data was presented using simple data presentation tools such as tables and charts. The data collected were qualitatively analysed.

The researchers from the unset has aspired to collect twenty medicinal plants used by traditional healers in oral health care management but surprisingly  the researchers after interviewing 8 traditional healers through questionnaires realised 25 plants since the healers readily participated .

The data collected were guided with questions on demography, ailments treated ,plants and their parts used, types of formulations , and methods of administraions.The photographs of each plants were taken together with their scientific names after consulting the traditional healers and botanist.the photographs are placed in the appendix with each plant identified by a scientific names.

Table 1 showing list of s used by traditional healers.

Table 2: Sex of traditional healers

Fig 1

Table 3: Diseases treated

Fig 2

Table 4: Formulation and methods of administration

Table  5: Cost of treatment

Table 6 : Side effects

Table 7: Duration of treatment

Discussion       

 From the main objective ,the researchers set out ,to assess the use of traditional medicine in  oral healthcare in the MBOH-NSO village of Bui-Division in the North West region and the BALEVENG village of Dschang  in the Western region of Cameroon.    

The current findings from the studies proved that  the traditional healers  of the  Baleveng and Mboh-nso villages treat a good number of disease (dental  caries, dry mouth,  bullous lesions ,sore  mouth, gingivitis, migrane).   

Specifically ,the researchers  set out to identify 20 medicinal plants ,but surprisingly,25plants were identified, proving that inhabitants of the two villages  depend more on traditional medicine not only for oral health care, but also for other health related problems as seen from the literature review as stated by Abebe D (2001).Which says that 80%of Asian and African countries ,and the developed countries depend on traditional medicine.    

Moreover, the researchers set out to assess the methods of preparation and to an extend the research team was interested in knowing their methods of preservation after preparation .The most interesting finding was that  the plants were mostly prepared in the paste form, some of which were used in the treatment of dental caries by removing worms responsible for the pain by direct application. Other forms were ;powder ,gel ,and as toothbrush .It was also discovered  that due to availability of the plants, once plants were prepared and used, especially the paste brush and gel, they were discarded immediately while the powders and solutions could be used for a longer period for as long as one week.      

Furthermore, the  team set out to determine the ailments treated ,the team realised that toothache was the most treated ailment without any extractions done     

Another objective was to find out   their cost of  treatment , the most interesting result was that ,some ailments were treated very cheaply ,like in the treatment of sore mouth where the patient could pay with salt, and palm oil while others were very expensive  unlike dental caries where it is belief  that worms responsible for the pain are removed, the reason for high cost of two fowls ,cash, and palm wine.  

Before going out to the field, the researchers hypothesized that traditional healers render relatively cheap treatment the reason why  rural dwellers depend more on them .But surprisingly ,it was discovered that a majority of their treatments were expensive. Also the  team ,discovered that ,the healer hardly attack the sources of  infections. Nevertheless, this was proven to be true because no oral hygiene instructions were given after treatment .Since the healers had no knowledge of the standard anatomy of the oral cavity, they are bound to treat out of guest work.

As concerning the part used , the healers made good use of leaves and seeds (table.1).The Team realised that all the plants had no side effects reason being that most of these plants were also used to treat other health related problems. The treatments were realised to have no specific duration. An equal number of sexes of healers were sought with giving a total of eight healers.  

The scientific and common names of the medicinal plants used by traditional healers were brought out unfortunately ,the list for the common names was not exhausted .The photograph of each plant was to be snapped ,each of the photographs have been placed in the appendix .Though ,the qualities of the pictures were not the best .

Conclusion        

The study  has shown  that  a majority of  the inhabitants of  the  mboh-nso village and the Baleveng village depend so much on the use of  traditional medicine in oral health care and other health related problems .Hence it could be concluded that ,the absence of attacking the source ,the absence of oral hygiene instruction and lack of knowledge in the anatomy and physiology of the oral cavity could lead to infections advancing to complications which will be attributed to witches and wizard attacks.

Recommendation                             

1. The researchers encourage the inhabitants of these two villages to improve on their oral hygiene in order to limit the rate of oral health problems.

2. The research team recommends that further research be done on same topic by others in other parts and regions of the country so that result be can generalised.

3. Also the team recommends that this research should be sponsored further to determine the active ingredients of various plants realised.

References

1. Dawit Abebe 2001. The role of medicine plants in Healthcare coverage of sustainable use of medicinal plants in Ethiopia. Proceedings of National Workshop on Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants in Ethiopia. pp. 6-21.