· There is need to create an environment, for example by establishing a loan scheme, to enable the participation of communities in income-generating activities to offset the selling of assets, the withdrawal of children from school, and reduction in fertilizer inputs as a result of illness and death in a household.
· Resource scarcity and limited use and access to forest product collection require increased efforts in the establishment of nurseries and tree planting on customary land and around homesteads, as well as intensification of agroforestry practices.
· A number of approaches must be adopted to increase the availability of medicinal plants, identified as a primary response in coping with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses. These include introducing training programmes in better harvesting methods of medicinal plants and empowering local communities with greater control in enforcing rules of conservation and management of the resources.
· Efforts to increase the availability of medicinal plants should also allow for introduction of and technological research in the ex-situ cultivation in homesteads and gardens, and in-situ planting in the existing natural forests, starting with those known to treat HIV/AIDS-related illnesses. The strengths associated with such approaches strongly lay in community involvement, co-management and ownership of the resources, as well as in traditional leadership and authority. The weaknesses linked to these approaches, e.g. uncontrolled exploitation of medicinal plants, would largely prevail in the absence of organized community-based management.
· Forestry and wildlife sectors should consider developing stronger links with health ministries and agencies, observed to be active in HIV/AIDS programmes, to facilitate workplace programmes in awareness building, behaviour change communication, stigma and discrimination, voluntary testing and counselling, and modification of the working conditions of employees exposed to high risk situations.
· The conservation and management of traditional medicines, increasingly recognized for their current and potential role in the treatment of opportunistic infections and in palliative care, must be promoted. Traditional healers, medical practitioners and the Ministry of Health should collaborate to ensure that traditional medicine remains an option where access to other options is severely limited.
· Additionally, herbalists, the Forestry Department and local communities to work collaboratively in protecting and conserving the remaining medicinal plants, for example by producing a list of medicinal plant species in the local area and sensitizing communities on the importance of protecting such species. Use and development of technologies for propagation must be pursued for the remaining medicinal plants as well as for the re-introduction of depleted species from an area.
