Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Home remedies make a comeback

Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar

Time-honoured cure: Women preparing home remedies using locally-available herbs at Vithura, near Thiruvananthapuram, as part of a participatory project launched by the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute. —

Thiruvananthapuram: Residents of the Vithura panchayat in the foothills of the Western Ghats are rediscovering the virtues of traditional home remedies. The village is part of a State-wide project launched by the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) to revive local health traditions based on endemic medicinal herbs.

Titled Herbs for All and Health for All, the participatory programme seeks to promote home remedies for common ailments and promote them as an element of primary health care. It also focuses on conservation of medicinal plants.

The action plan involves an awareness programme for villagers on epidemic prevention and training in conservation and sustainable exploitation of plants used for food and medicine. They are taught to prepare simple herbal combinations used to treat common ailments like cold, cough, stomach ache, inflammation and cuts and bruises. The residents are also being trained in homestead-level cultivation of medicinal plants. Panchayat members, Ayurvedic physicians, tribal healers, members of Kudumbasree units, public health experts, agriculturists and scientists from the TBGRI are helping the local people in implementing the project.

“The project is designed to revive the concept of home remedy. Once trained, the villagers can depend on medicinal plants reared in their own backyard for small ailments instead of rushing to a doctor. By improving their immune system, it will help them fight emerging and re-emerging infections,” says E.P. Yesodharan, executive vice-president, Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE). “The programme also seeks to promote the cultivation and sustainable utilisation of endemic species of plants used for food and medicine,” explains S. Rajasekharan, Head of the Department of Ethnomedicine, TBGRI.

Women are the main participants in the programme. At the Anappara ward, a group of women have gathered at a house for what has now become a weekly exercise. While some of them wash and pound the herbs, others light the hearth and heat the oil. Soon, the smell of herbal medicine permeates the air. “Most of us have received training in preparing different types of oils, creams and extracts. We come together during weekends,” says Ajitha, a housewife from Kallar.

All the medicines are prepared by hand in the traditional method using pestle and mortar, grinding stone and firewood hearth.

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