**3. Factors affecting and reasons for TCAM use**

A number of factors were identified as being promoters of TCAM use. Generally, the use of TCAM could simply be for health promotion and maintenance, but could equally be dependent on the type of illness and severity. Favorites among diseases include mental illness, impotence, infertility in females, and chronic disorders. Key factors that affect its use include relatively low cost and flexibility of payment of products and services, accessibility, availability affordability, compatibility, and suitability for the treatment of various diseases particularly certain chronic ones that orthodox medicine has not been able to cure, and the perception that because these products are natural, they must be safe with fewer side effects [38]. It was observed that patients that use TCAM also access conventional medicine, which more common in developing countries [39]. The fact that TCAM is in alignment with sociocultural, religious, and spiritual values is also a strong factor. Trust and confidence in traditional medicine practitioners and the perceived privacy as well as recommendation by elders, relatives, and friends also contributed to the choice to patronize TCAM products and facilities. Furthermore, recent increase in scientific research and validation of traditional medicines and aggressive advertisement of products and services are enhancing factors.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Factors related to reasons for TCAM use and nonuse [41].*

*African Traditional and Complementary Therapies DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103060*

Dissatisfaction with conventional medicine, inadequate health facilities, unavailability of drugs, difficulty in accessing healthcare, negative attitudes of health workers, lengthy procedures, and long waiting time are other push factors to patronizing TCAM. Furthermore, TCAM is sought for: i) health conditions that had failed to respond to initial treatment, ii) health conditions stigmatized at communities of origin, and iii) health conditions thought to have resulted from supernatural causes [40]. Some of the benefits of complementary therapies are the holistic approach, which is more or less according to the philosophies and beliefs of a people, and the individualized approach to patients' care, involving them as active participants in their own health, portraying a high degree of physical, psychological, and spiritual contribution to treatment with a sense of self-satisfaction. There is also a strong emphasis on use as preventive medicine [41, 42] (**Figure 1**).
