online database search

• search the UCT TRAMED III database
  This database is updated regularly.

The general objectives of the Traditional Medicines Database and information centre are:

• To use ethnopharmacoepidemiological techniques in the collection of information on medicinal plants in Africa and on their traditional uses, and to record and codify these in a comprehensive database;
• To develop models for the rational use and development of herbal remedies in Africa in order to harmonise traditional practices with the present health care systems;
• To identify bioactive compounds from among the traditional remedies and to investigate them as potential leads in drug development, with special reference to remedies used for malaria and tuberculosis;
• To develop and further to contribute to the scientific basis of drug evaluation and control insofar as it has bearing on the protection and rational use of medicinal plants in southern Africa.

The Traditional Medicines Database is to incorporate:

• material gathered from the contemporary scientific literature on medicinal plants and their pharmacology and toxicology;
• material from collections, such as books, published articles, theses and databases already available, such as the Noristan database, concentrating on African plants;
• an operational laboratory database acting as a "lab book" for our research units.

Information is continuously added, including:

• botanical taxonomy;
• geographical location;
• monographs of traditional medicinal plants that will be included in a Traditional Herbal medicines Pharmacopoeia for South Africa;
• reported medicinal treatments, chemical information, pharmacological and toxicological content.

Information has been gathered from various literature sources; institutions such as herbaria and botanical gardens; workshops with traditional healers (with their consent), and from already recorded narrative accounts.