Practice of Ethno-Medicine for Abortion and Anti-fertility among Tribals of Chhattisgarh

Abstract

India is a habitat of large number of indigenous tribals’ people. They are known as by their simple but unique life style. Inspite of their tradition, culture and identified social organisation, they have tremendous knowledge of herbal plants and its medicinal values. In many tribals communities’ sterilization is prohibited but they maintain birth between children by specific antifertility and abortificiant herbal medicine. Objective: By above background the aim of the research study is to find out the reasons by which traditional method of abortification and sterilization are prevalent among tribals’ communities, and to explore their knowledge about herbal plants which they used for antifertility and abortion. Methodology and Study Area: The method of data collection is based on secondary literature review and field work. Some selective tools like questionnaire, structured and semi structured schedule, focus group discussion had been used for acquiring data and knowledge from women, herbal healers and knowledgeable persons separately. In tribals’ areas, lots of state and central government programmes are working but the local people are not availing benefit from the institutions. So, typical tribals dominating block Bastar, Chhattisgarh, is selected for study. Result: The finding of the study reveals that the prevalence of poor institutional facility in tribals’ areas and superstitious believe on herbal healers, are the main reasons for the practicing of antifertility and abortificiant herbal medicine. The illiterate tribals have knowledge about the herbal plants but they don’t know about the pathological values and its effects on the patients. Sometimes this partial knowledge create dangerous for patients’ health. Conclusion: Herbal plant diversity is abundantly found in the forest of Bastar which needs to specify their medicinal uses and productive utilization. In this paper specific antifertility and abortificiant plants are documented. Thus, plant drugs used in the tribals and rural areas deserves detailed studies. The efficacy and safety of most of the traditional remedies of the tribals are required to be subjected to scientific verification particularly in chemical investigation.