"Abstract:

Background: Herbal medicine is the derived products from plants that are used for maintenance of health and provide therapeutic action to the user, and may be in various dosage forms. According to estimates, 80% of people use herbal medicine worldwide.

Method: An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used in the study, which was conducted from April 19 to May 23 2023, consisting of 368 participants.

Results and discussion: in this study involving 368 participants, most of them were above the age of 31 years (51.6%). Most of the study participants were from the rural areas (85.5%). 51.7% of participants in the study did not attend formal education, and 98.2% of them were married. Also, 56.7% of the participants declared that they had no history of herbal medicine use. Furthermore, slightly more than two-thirds (68.5%) of the study participants had at least one ANC visit and 56.9% of them had one to three ANC visits. Moreover, 63% of the study subjects had family health insurance. About 34.2% of the participants in this study had used HM while pregnant, and 49.1% of them had sufficient understanding of the effects of HM use during pregnancy. Also, the prevalence of herbal medicine usage during pregnancy was 43.3%.

Conclusion: Women’s knowledge on the safety of herbal medicine use was low. Also the prevalence of herbal medicine usage was 43.3%, which is also low considering that herbal medicine is the u turn of health maintenance today."