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. 2012:2012:604363.
doi: 10.1155/2012/604363. Epub 2012 Jun 18.

Comparative medical ethnobotany of the senegalese community living in turin (northwestern Italy) and in adeane (southern senegal)

Rachele Ellena  1 , Cassandra L Quave, Andrea Pieroni
Affiliations

Comparative medical ethnobotany of the senegalese community living in turin (northwestern Italy) and in adeane (southern senegal)

Rachele Ellena et al. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012.

Abstract

A medico-ethnobotanical survey was conducted among the Senegalese migrant communities of Turin (Piedmont, NW Italy) and their peers living in Adeane (Casamance, Southern Senegal), both among healers and laypeople. Through 27 in-depth interviews, 71 medicinal plant taxa were recorded and identified in Adeane and 41 in Turin, for a total of 315 different folk remedies recorded in Senegal and 62 in Turin. The large majority of the medicinal plants recorded among Senegalese migrants in Turin were also used in their country of origin. These findings demonstrate the resilience of home remedies among migrants and consequently the role they should have in shaping public health policies devoted to migrant groups in Western Countries, which seek to seriously take into account culturally sensitive approaches, that is, emic health-seeking strategies.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location of the study sites.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overlap between the folk medicinal taxa quoted by healers and laypeople in Adeane.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Overlap between the medicinal plant reports quoted by healers and laypeople in Adeane (a single medicinal plant report is defined as “a given taxon x, prepared as y, used for z”).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Overlap between the botanical genera quoted as medicinally used in Turin and Adeane (by laypeople).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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