Alternative & Integrative Medicine

Changing Pattern of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Tikapur Nepal: A Hope for Future Health

Abstract

Ranabhat Chhabi, YA Do, DW Ahn, KJ Lee and CB Kim

Primitive Medicines; Ayurvedic Herbal and other treatment therapy are the oldest way of treatment in eastern philosophy and now it is classified Complementary and the Alternative Medicine (CAM). In Nepal they have been very famous since last century. There was high utilization in mid and far western region of Nepal in the past. So it is necessary to explore their use in that territory. Objectives: The main objective of this study was to explore the available herbs product and their utilization as therapeutic. Methodology: A cross sectional study was done within Kailali district in Nepal.The respondents were selected in systematic random sampling and the clusters were selected in PPS having 27% in household base. Pretested questionnaire were used for the study. Ethical Approved was taken from Nepal health research council and informed consent was taken from respondents. Epi data 3.1 version was used to entry the data and SPSS 20 was used for the data analysis. Chi Square test was used to show the association between different variable and CAM utilization. Results: During the study 24 types of herbs were found in practice. About 1/4th (23.7%) used the herbs as therapeutic use, Narayanpur used least proportion (10%), and the people who had misconception of food used the herbs. More than 1/3rd (37%) used those herbs for cough and respiratory symptoms. The person who had information about the cause of disease and the knowledge of preventive ways with the application of herbs were statistically significant (p<0.0001). Conclusion: The behavior of using CAM is very old practice and very effective of some illness even now. The utilization of therapy is done together with current allopathic treatment system and there is limited research of CAM utilization with comparative study. A comparative study should be necessary to find the implication of herbs with the modern allopathic system and economic aspects. If their application can be updated and used with research, it will have good result for the treatment.