In Zulu, there is a proverb that says: “umuthi ngeke uphile zingekho izinyamazane” which means “traditional medicine cannot exist without animals”. This points to the significance of using animals in traditional medicine.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as “the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement, or treatment of physical and mental illness”. Traditional medicine makes use of natural products such as plants, minerals, animal extracts, and microorganisms to create medicines to treat a range of conditions, ailments, and life-threatening diseases.