| An investigation of the medical ethnobotany practices in southern Uganda has contributed to Uganda's national effort to characterize the plant species often used by its people in the place of basic pharmaceuticals. For the purposes of documenting the tropical plants used medicinally by the Baganda Tribe of the Buganda Kingdom, and of preliminary evaluation of antimicrobial activity in the validation of traditional usage, a new international research agreement was created between the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Uganda Ministry of Health Natural Chemotherapeutics Research Laboratory (NCRL). Interviews with traditional medical herbalists and other local health care workers were conducted in rural and urban areas, with prior informed consent. Records for medicinal uses of 228 species of plants found in the region were compiled, identified, and voucher herbarium specimens deposited at Ugandan and United States (US) institutions.; Equipment and supplies necessary to conduct antimicrobial susceptibility studies in Kampala were provided through external funding. Extracts were made and screened against human pathogenic bacteria and human pathogenic yeasts at the laboratories of the NCRL and at UIC laboratories. Numerous species used by Baganda herbalists in the treatment of wounds, superficial fungal infections and diarrheal disease demonstrated activity against one or more bacterial or fungal human pathogens. Methanolic extracts of the leaves, fruits and twigs of Rubus apetalus Poir. (Rosaceae) showed a broad profile of antimicrobial activity in the susceptibility assays performed at NCRL and later at UIC. Bioassay-guided fractionation of the chloroform extract yielded a mixture of three structurally similar compounds which were active in the assay. The alkanols 1-octacosanol, 1-triacontanol, and 1-dotriacontanol were isolated as a mixture and elucidated by modern chemical structural techniques.; As a component of the educational portion of this project, a public health poster was prepared, using published data from the world literature, for distribution to traditional and conventional health care workers in the region. Topical use of various traditional antimicrobial preparations were included in the poster, as were warnings against use of toxic species. The public health poster was conceptualized and designed by the Ugandan and US investigators. |
