Survey and documentation of medicinal plants used for treating diabetes within an urban environment : in Berea Herbal Market.

Africa is blessed with a rich biodiversity of natural resources but is afflicted with several diseases. Diabetic is one of the chronic diseases that have become of worldwide concern, affecting families and their working environments and within communities. The use of traditional medicinal plants used by traditional healers has shown promising treatment and has become an essential part of life with successful historic stories attached to the welfare of most households worldwide.  In South Africa, herbal medicine is one of the methods used to cure ailments especially the common ones, with approximately 80 percent of the populace still reliant  onit. Diabetesmellitusisone of  the  chronicdiseasesthat havebecome a worldwide concern, affecting families and working environments within communities. Diabetes mellitusis a metabolic disease, which occurs as a result of insulin deficiency and/or insulin resistance.Diabetes has no cure, but it can be be managed. There are many known therapeutic strategies for thetreatment of diabetes. Therapeutic strategies ranges from, the reduction of the demand for insulin, stimulation of endogenous insulin secretion, enhancement of the action of insulin at the target tissues and the  inhibition of  degradation of oligo-and disaccharides. Worldwide Medicinal  plants have been considered as another way of enhacing the therapeutic strategies. African countries have a history of using herbal medicine as there primary health care sytems. To enrich the knowledge of new bioactive molecules and their natural resources, this investigation documented plants used for treating diabetes mellitus(type 2) and further evaluated the  antioxidant activity of plants with highest usage frequency as  mentioned by the Traditional health Practitioners. The research ascertainedthe degreeof medicinal plant usage and  conservation status of plants mention in the survey.