Abstract
BackgroundPrevious research has revealed high rates of traditional medicine usage in Nigeria. Reports of widespread contamination of herbal medicine products and higher rates of noncompliance with Western medications among traditional medicine users have raised concerns about the safety of traditional medicine use. Few studies have explored how demographic factors predict rates of traditional medicine use in the general population.MethodsWe conducted interviews of 748 adult women recruited from the communities in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria from 2013 to 2015. A structured questionnaire was created to collect data on rates of traditional medicine use and demographic factors such as age, education, ethnicity, and occupation. Multivariate logistic regressions were run to examine factors related to traditional medicine use, and the effects were measured with odds ratios (OR) along with 95% confidence interval (95%CI).ResultsThe overall proportion of traditional medicine use was 81.6%. Women from the Ibo and Hausa ethnic groups were significantly less likely to use traditional medicine than the majority Yoruba group (OR 0.25, 95%CI 0.10–0.63;, OR 0.43, 95%CI 0.24–0.76) respectively). In addition, educated women were less likely than their non-educated counterparts to have used traditional medicine, with the biggest effect seen in women with a secondary education (OR 0.42, 95%CI 0.21–0.85).ConclusionsWe found a high rate of traditional medicine usage, consistent with that found in prior research. A novel finding was the significance of ethnicity as a predictor for usage rates.
Highlights
Previous research has revealed high rates of traditional medicine usage in Nigeria
Past studies have not found a relationship between education level and traditional medicine use [2], our study showed a significant trend towards highly educated women being less likely to use traditional medicine than those with no education, with a significant effect found for women with a secondary education (OR = 0.42)
In conclusion, our study found a high rate of traditional medicine (TM) usage among women living in a major urban center in Nigeria consistent with that found in prior studies
Summary
Previous research has revealed high rates of traditional medicine usage in Nigeria. Few studies have explored how demographic factors predict rates of traditional medicine use in the general population. Li et al BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies (2020) 20:93 multiple forms of CAM have been shown to interfere with chemotherapy regimens [8, 9]. Traditional medicine usage has been shown to interfere with proper adherence to biomedical treatment regimes. Previous studies have found relationships between traditional medicine usage and medication non-adherence [4], and many patients turn to biomedical treatment only after traditional medicine has failed to cure them [11]. A majority of patients do not disclose their use of traditional medicine to biomedical doctors, in large part because doctors fail to ask [2, 12]. There is high CAM utilization among cancer patients ranging from 43 to 88%, and these numbers may be even higher in lower-income countries [13,14,15]
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