Momordica foetida phytochemical screening

CHAPTER ONE 1.0 INTRODUCTION Bioactive plants are commonly used by traditional healers or in folklore medicines for the relief of pain or some alignments. This act of medication has made some plant families popular (Heinrich 2000; Kuete et al., 2006).The acceptance of traditional medicine as an alternative form of health care has assisted scientists in elevating these claims, by studying the chemical composition and biological potential (Bisignano et al., 1996; Hammer et al., 1999). This has led to the advent of new drugs in the market. In the last decades, the pharmaceutical industry has been faced with an influx of drug-resistance pathogens in treating infectious diseases (Hugo and Russel, 1984). The increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the side effects of some known drugs has aroused the interest of scientist in tapping bioactive plants to control and cure some of the global infections (Hostettmann and Hamburger, 1991). Nigeria and South Africa is a country with great cultural diversity and biodiversity, with many people still using a wide variety of plants in medicine and other necessities of life (Van Wyk and Gericke, 2000)