Herbs against HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis

Conserving Swaziland's endangered medicinal plants – a new approach

Swaziland Homeopathy Project (SHP) has become a long term partner of sahee based on the successful past projects Homeopathy shall become accessible for all starting in 2009, followed by the projects Propagation of a holistic treatment and homeopathy in Swaziland, and Sustainable Homeopathy.
Continuing and strengthening the partnership with SHP, sahee supports two parallel and interlinked projects since 2016: 1. The SHP's main objective to provide free or affordable homeopathy in Swaziland (see Homeopathy: a good, low cost and humane alternative), and 2. the here presented project to protect herbal medicinal plants.

There is an increased demand for immune boosting traditional herbal medicines due to the HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis epidemic. In particular
two plants are useful in this regard namely Warburgia salutaris (pepper bark) and Siphonochilus aethiopicus. (african wild ginger) and they are now endangered. This situation has resulted from nearly 30 years of increased harvesting by both traditional and informal medicinal plant traders.

It is very important to preserve these plants as they have great potential for modern medicine and the development of new pharmaceutical drugs especially with the advent of multiple drug resistance.

In this context the main purpose of this project is to reduce the inferior harvesting practices of these two endangered medicinal plants and alleviate the demand for these species in the wild or their natural habitat. The project will do this through a two pronged approach:
i) by encouraging the cultivation in both the formal and informal sectors of threatened or extinct wild populations of medicinal plants and
ii) introducing these endangered plants’ use in a homeopathic form.

The following activities are key to reach the above mentioned objectives:
a) Increased cultivation of Warburgia and Siphonochilus in the Swaziland National Trust Commission (SNTC) indigenous nurseries and the introduction of these species into other protected areas and in at least one commercial nursery (Vickery’s seedlings) so that the plants are readily available for purchase and replanting. This initiative will create a new harvesting resource both inside and outside of Swaziland’s nature reserves or protected areas.
b) Training informal plant harvesters and traders in sustainable harvesting practices and the effective cultivation of Warburgia and Siphonochilus in both rural homestead gardens and on communal nation land, where appropriate.
c) Manufacture of homeopathic remedies from these two species and the development of a pharmacopeia and materia medica for these two plants. These will be derived from a comprehensive standard approved homeopathic clinical proving.
d) Training of the informal plant traders in basic homeopathic skills so that they may have an alternative resource.