Access to healthcare facilities in Ghana is very poor as one medical doctor is to more than 6,000 people (Africapedia, 2007), with majority of them practicing in the two largest cities of Accra and Kumasi. According to Gbile (1988) about 80% of the population in Africa uses plant medicine partly due to poverty and insufficient number of medical professionals. Medicinal plants therefore play an important role in our healthcare delivery but over-reliance on wild collections results in dwindling of the resource. The current rate of forest degradation, intensive exploitation and utilization of the various medicinal plants across the West African sub region pose serious threats to the continued availability of these invaluable forest resources. Indigenous knowledge on the utilization and conservation of these species are being lost as the old custodians of the knowledge pass away. Also, parts of the plants often harvested are those used for anchorage, nutrient uptake, photosynthesis and regeneration by the plants. These threaten the plants natural regeneration, vigorous stand development and continuous existence of the species in natural ecosystem. There is therefore the need for deliberate and concerted efforts to develop appropriate conservation and sustainable management strategies for threatened or endangered medicinal plant species. The selected species were identified through a major study that involved a comparative analysis on utilization and availability of medicinal plants in Ghana (Ofori et al ., 2010). This handbook therefore describes ten threatened or endangered medicinal plant species in relation to the species identity, ecology and distribution, uses, reproduction and propagation methods for efficient conservation.
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