A CLUSTER SURVEY ON THE USE OF HERBS IN THE IRAQI SOCIETY
KADHIM ALI KADHIM
Department of Pharmacy, Al-Yarmok College University, Iraq.
ZENA M. QARAGHOLI *
Department of Pharmacognosy and Medicinal Plants, College of Pharmacy, University of Baghdad, Iraq.
GHOFRAN KHUDAIR HAMAD
Department of Pharmacy, Al-Yarmok College University, Iraq.
SAFA OMRAN
Department of Pharmacy, Al-Yarmok College University, Iraq.
AYAT HAMID
Department of Pharmacy, Al-Yarmok College University, Iraq.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This research was the first in this aspect in Iraqi population and we compared the results with other countries. We collected data of 190 patients from 28 February 2019 to 28 April in Iraqi social media. We used a special questionnaire concerned Iraqi population was conducted asking questions to show the using of Herbal medicine in a sample of Iraqi adults’ patients at different diseases and this questionnaire contain many questions about the patient gender, age, occupation, marital status, believe in the healing power of plants and other questions to assemble information that we needed in this research. Some of data was similar to data from other countries and another was particularly similar. High percentage of patient’s Iraqi society believe in healing power of herbs and awareness of purposes of its uses. Most patients in this survey used the herbal medicines for health promotion because they believe that herbal medicines make them fell comfort even it may not actually effective in that disease, they used it just like placebo. The using of herbs not always depending on prescription or doctor advices and some of the patients decided to use the herbs by themselves.
Keywords: A cluster survey, Iraqi population, herbal, medicine