Folk Medicinal Practices in Vasu Bihar Village, Bogra District, Bangladesh

Bangladesh has over 86,000 villages spread throughout the country. The primary health-care providers of the village inhabitants are usually folk medicinal practitioners (Kavirajes) since the villagers either lack access to modern medical facilities or cannot afford the price of modern medicines. Kavirajes rely on simple preparations of medicinal plants for treatment; the use of medicinal plants can vary widely between Kavirajes of different villages. We conducted an ethnomedicinal survey among the Kavirajes of Vasu Bihar village located within Bogra district, Bangladesh to know about the folk medicinal practices of the village Kavirajes. Following obtaining informed consent from the Kavirajes, interviews were conducted with the help of a semistructured questionnaire and the guided field-walk method. All medicinal plants as pointed out by the Kavirajes were collected and identified at the Bangladesh National Herbarium. It was observed that the Kavirajes of Vasu Bihar village utilized 53 plant species distributed into 31 families for treatment of various ailments. The Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae, and the Fabaceae families contributed four plants per family followed by the Rutaceae family with three plant species. 11 plants were used for treatment of gastrointestinal disorders, 6 for pain, and 5 plants for skin disorders, indicating that these are possibly the most common ailments prevalent within the village. Interestingly, the Kavirajes used 3 plants for treatment of cancers or tumors and 3 plants for treatment of diabetes, which are either incurable diseases or not completely cured with modern allopathic medicine. Leaves constituted 45.1% of total uses, followed by fruits (14.1%). Other plant parts used by the Kavirajes included whole plant, stem, shoot, root, flower, fruit, seed, bark, and rhizome. The folk medicinal use of plants offers tremendous potential for scientists to conduct further research on these plants to discover lead compounds and more efficacious drugs.