Nongasida Yameogo
Nongasida received his grant of £3,000 to allow him to carry out research on the use of medicinal plants by poultry farmers in Burkina Faso to treat poultry disease.
The grant will be use to take part in a short training course on applied ethnopharmacology at the University of Metz in France www.ethnopharmacologia.org and also for lab work at the inter state School of Veterinary Medicine of Dakar in Senegal.
Nongasida qualified as a Vet from the Inter State School of Veterinary Medicine in 1994 and worked as a veterinarian at the school of Veterinary Medicine and the National Livestock Laboratory. He is currently studying for his PhD in Natural Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Faculty of Science of the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2007
Traditional poultry rearing system plays a key role in poverty alleviation in rural area of Burkina Faso. Village chickens are regularly sold to provide funds for daily life’s problems of households (health, education, religious or social problems). The recent outbreak of avian influenza in two areas of the country and its consequence of fowl destruction showed that many families fall in an extreme poverty without this kind of livestock which is a good mean for income generation for the poor strata of the population.
Due to the lake of financial means, traditional poultry farmers use to treat their chickens’ diseases with medicinal plants. I did a national ethnobotanical survey in 2005 on this kind of traditional medicine by interviewing 1035 farmers which gave 77 species of medicinal plant against various chickens’ diseases (Yameogo, 2005). In the framework of a PhD research project entitled: ”experimental validation of the use of some medicinal plants to control village chickens’ diseases in Burkina Faso”, I undertook to test the therapeutic efficacy of some of these medicinal plants.
The aim of the Orskov Foundation’s small Grant was to reinforce my scientific expertise for the implementation of this research project. Two activities were scheduled to be undertaken with the grant:
- to attend to a short training course from the 11th to 16th September 2006 at METZ (France) and entitled “Applied ethnopharmacology: from medicinal plants to medical drug”.
- and to undertake laboratory work at the Inter States School of Veterinary Sciences and Medicine of Dakar (Senegal) by testing in vivo therapeutic efficacy of two medicinal plants against poultry parasites (coccidiosis) and Gomboro disease.
I can say that the Orskov Foundation’s grant enable me to make two essential activities for my research project:
The methodologies of plants study studied during the training course will be used to go into depth with the research project and for the results' dissemination in the future.
The therapeutic tests showed the efficacy of Pterocarpus erinaceus for zootechnical performance and against coccidiosis while there is not toxicity by oral route. A chemical screening will be done to identify chemical compound family responsible of these proprieties and further tests will be done with others kind of extract ( hydroancetonic and methanolic) to go into therapeutic test in depth.
Three immediate benefits for me can be pointed out:
- I made great progress with my PhD work which is scheduled to be presented in January 2008.
- I made progress in my professional career because scientific publications will move me up. In another way, the research links made during the training course will be very useful for establishment of research network.
- This grant will allow me to develop other themes of research in relation to the current subject.
