Socio-Economic Importance of Honey among Traditional Healers and Orthodox Practitioners in Iwo Local Government Area of Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The necessity for people’s adequate and quality as well as good health and standard of living for overall National development informed the main reason for the study on Socio-economic importance of honey among traditional healers and orthodox medical practitioners in Iwo Local Government Area, Osun State. A total of 105questionnaires wereadministered, while 91 were retrieved from the respondents. Various uses of honey were investigated both for personal consumption and medicinal purpose. The result shows that 41.8 % of the respondent use honey for multiple purpose, while 35.2% use honey mainly for medicinal purpose, 16.5% use it mainly as beverages, while the remaining 6.6% for use in treatments. The Chi Square Test showed a higher calculated value of 385.71 than the tabulated value of 21.026. This confirms a strong relationship between the use of honey and social life of Iwo people. The major constraints discovered was that Traditional healers do not exercise strict control on the quantity doses of honey used for different ailments. It is therefore recommended that both rural and urban dwellers should be sensitized about the use of honey, in order to encourage sustainable consumption for improvement of health status.

Keywords: Medicinal, orthodox, traditional, honey