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Introduction
Medicinal plants have been the mainstay of traditional herbal medicine amongst rural dwellers worldwide since antiquity to date. Medicinal plants are plants having their parts containing substances that have useful therapeutic functions or serve as precursors for the synthesis of antimicrobial, antivirus, antifungal, antitumour, antimalarial, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic, antitumour drugs, etc(WHO, 1977). There have been reports of multiple drug resistance and the persistence of this challenge has led to the development of more potent synthetic antibiotics and other drugs which are expensive, with their attendant and serious side effects. Therefore local medicinal plants provide the link for new possible antimicrobial as well as other drugs (World health organization 1993). Funtumia elastica which is also known as “Silk rubber” is a medicinal plant belonging to the Apocynaceae family. It is a medium-sized African rubber tree with glossy leaves, milky sap, and long woody seedpods. The bark is the medicinal portion. Scientists studied Funtumia extensively in the 1960s, but only recently have its medicinal properties recaptured the interest of science. Funtumia has important antioxidant, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and antibiotic properties (Adekunle et al 2006).The extracts from the bark of the tree was found to kill free living amoebae and also kills entamoeba histolytica in the dysenteric stools of experimentally infected kittens. It is markedly lethal to the flagellate protozoon (Arias 1999). Also, Crude extracts of Funtumia elastica inhibit growth of many molds, including Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Candida, as well as the fungi that cause ringworm (Adekunle et al 2006). A medicinal plant can be defined as any plant used in order to prevent, relieve or cure a disease or to alter physiological and pathological process or any plant employed as a source of drugs or their precursors (Srivastava et al 1996). Plant derived medicines have made a large contribution to human health and well-being (Taylor et al 2001). Even today, plant materials remain an important source for combating illness, including infectious diseases (Matu and Van Staden, 2003). Dependence on plants as the source of medicine is more prevalent in developing countries where traditional medicine plays a major role in health care (World health organization 1993; Iwu et al 1999). Levels of sanitation, hygiene and living conditions for the majority of African people are not...