Indigenous medicinal knowledge and therapeutic practices of the endangered Ongota/Birale of Southwest Ethiopia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: This study documents the indigenous medicinal knowledge of the Ongota/Birale people in Hinchete Kebele (county) of Benna Tsemay Woreda (district), South Omo Zone, Ethiopia whose language is endangered, with only six speakers remaining. With their language endangered, documenting their heritage of ethnomedicine is necessary. The study was conducted from January 2023 to February 2024. METHODS: Data were collected using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with the remaining speakers, field observations, and medicinal plants specimen collection across 14 locations. The data were translated, transcribed, coded, and thematized. Thematic analysis was applied for identifying recurring themes and patterns in the data and interpreting. Frequency analysis was used for some quantifiable data. RESULTS: Ninety-eight sources were cataloged in this study including 31 plant taxa, 8 animal derivatives, 4 minerals, and 3 other materials. Thirty-seven distinct human health problems/Roosaa/ were treated by these. Solanaceae is the most frequently used plant family closely followed by Burseraceae and Tiliaceae. Herbs comprised the largest proportion (38.7%) of the identified medicinal plant species, followed by shrubs (25.8%), trees (22.58%), and climbers (12.9%). 83.87% were harvested from wild areas (natural forest) and 16.13% from home gardens. Grinding and crushing constituted (70%) as the dominant preparation method. The most common routes of administration are dermal (51.35%) and oral (35.13%). Animal-based products (milk, butter, honey, spleen, fat, blood), traditional drinks ('areke' and 'boordee'), and minerals (red soil, the salt mineral 'megaaddoo,' common salt, and copper) were also used. The most frequent therapies reported are cauterization (33.3%), bloodletting (33.3%), massage (22.2%), and acupressure (11.1%). From the 26 medicinal plants that grow in the study area, 7 i.e., Ocimum americanum, Acalypha fruticosa, Corchorus tridens, Adenium obesum, Terminalia brownii, Boswellia neglecta, and Sansevieria ehrenbergii were not reported for similar uses previously. Pharmacological studies have not yet been reported for 12 of the 26 medicinal plants against the causative agents of the diseases they reported. CONCLUSION: The Birale/Ongota have rich indigenous medicinal knowledge and therapeutic practices that have been maintaining their health. However, due to threats by environmental challenges and the endangerment of their language and culture, further research on ways of conserving their biodiversity and indigenous livelihoods, preserving their medicinal plants, finding the active ingredients in them, and integrating their indigenous healthcare system with the modern are required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".