The survey of traditional healers and camel herders in Butana and its vicinity revealed the existence of a large school of ethnoveterinarians and eco-researchers whose activities are service oriented and who depended predominantly on locally available resources.
While ethnoveterians forward an invaluable service to the pastoralist community, they stand helpless in the face of several diseases, and are also captive to some wrong concepts. The amount administered in phytotherapeutic treatment reduces the effective dose an animal can receive conveniently, thus reducing the concentration of active ingredients (e.g. antibiotic, anthelmintic) and in some cases subjecting the sick animal to the potential of toxicity.
Both healers and herders have a strong diagnostic capability and succeed to correctly classify (camel) diseases as regards their organ or system origin. However, their aetiologic classification lacks precision as they have no knowledge of the microbial world.
The following recommendations are suggested to further understand ethnoveterinary practice in the area and to evaluate its efficacy, constraints and future prospects:
a. Certain phytotherapeutics need further researches to identify their therapeutic potential and toxic profiles under controlled experimental conditions. This should also afford a good degree of chemical analysis in order to arrive at reliable therapeutics using local resources. Candidate items include Albizia anthelmintica, Calotropis procera, Artemesia, Cymbopogon nervatus and Balanites aegyptica.
b. Training and orientation of traditional healers is urgently needed, specially, in hygiene and disinfection, birth assistance and minor surgery. These courses could be arranged in a regional Veterinary Department in the vicinity of Butana and need not be as exhaustive or inclusive as the presently on-going Dryland Husbandry Project paravet training programmes, but they need to be separated. These courses should bear in mind the rather good professional background of the candidate. Following accreditation, a healer could be incorporated into the research and extension branches of the Veterinary Department and could operate as further instructor and advisor for the much younger paravets. The role of healers in the provision of veterinary services to the pastoral community should be tapped.
c. A branch dealing with ethnoveterinary practice should be established in each provincial Veterinary Department. This section should register the individual practitioners operating in villages and camps and monitor their contribution, research findings and constraints. This linkage affords closer operational relationship with local communities. Since healers are usually well respected and routinely visited by herders and livestock owners they can assist appreciably in disease monitoring. They can also be excellent extension agents, with reciprocation or feedback from pastoralists concerning drug efficacy, new developments in breeding, nutrition and animal husbandry.
d. It will be interesting to compare these observations with parallel studies of the ethnopractices among sheep and cattle keepers, essentially different pastoralists, who could have evolved different methods of disease control. It could also give more light if it especially considers cattle pastoralists who spread far south into the richer savannah zone. The ecological set up in this zone might afford a richer faunal exposure and availability of the physiotherapeutics.
