PHYTOCHEMISTRY, PHARMACOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES AND ETHNOBOTANICAL STUDIES OF SELECTED INDIGENOUS ZAMBIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS – A REVIEW

Medicinal plants have been used as therapeutic relief agents in many Zambian societies. Up to date, it has been statistically approximated that more than 70% of the Zambian population still relies heavily on medicinal plants as sources of pain relief, mainly because of shortage of medications in hospitals and the limited access to health care facilities. These medicinal plants are effective in the management of various illnesses owing to the secondary metabolites that offer defensive mechanism against pathogens. Aside from the fact that most medicinal plants indigenous to Zambia are yet to be profiled to affirm they potency experimentally, there still remains a limited compilation of the very few that have been profiled. This study thus, aimed to review the scientific literature on Phytochemistry, pharmacologic studies conducted and while also reviewing in detail the ethnobotanical studies carried out on some of the medicinal plants. This knowledge is of tremendous importance to future and current Zambian researchers in drug development, in their effort to identify lead or novel plant-based drugs for both the present and future. The data for this review was obtain by conducting a literature search in electronic data bases meant for professional and academic use such as google scholar, Scopus, web of Science, science direct, and PubMed as well as searching on google using key words to specifically identify peer reviewed published articles on medicinal plants that are indigenous to Zambia. This review has shown that some indigenous Zambian medicinal plants have tremendous potential as antioxidant, Uterotonic, antibacterial, antidiabetic, antihyperglycemic and antihyperlipidic agents.