Sociocultural Influences on Cancer Care in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cultural beliefs impact people’s perceptions regarding health, illness and their ability to understand and respond to health care providers’ instructions, thereby affecting compliance and treatment outcomes. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there is limited data on the extent to which sociocultural beliefs, including the use of traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM) and religion and spirituality influence (1) help-seeking behavior when one is faced with probable cancer symptoms, (2) cancer stage at diagnosis and (3) cancer outcomes. This chapter focuses on the correlations between culture and T&CM, as both a concept and a practice. Culture and religion underlie most human conduct and may determine the uptake of preventive measures, attributions of causes of illnesses, responses to illnesses, coping strategies, and choices of treatments. Beliefs and cultures are, therefore, important determinants of health and illness. However, there are still gaps in our knowledge of how sociocultural factors, including the use of traditional and complementary medicines, and religion contribute to and determine cancer treatment outcomes in SSA, as well as the prevalence of T&CM use, reasons for using T&CM, the safety and risks profiles of the various T&CMs, predictors of use among adult cancer patients, and the benefits of T&CM treatment, including survival rates. There is limited data on T&CM’s mechanism of actions for cancer patients in SSA. Similarly, little is known about health care professionals’ perspectives regarding why cancer patients use T&CMs but prefer not to disclose this use to their health care teams. There is need for appropriately designed research to improve our understanding of how sociocultural beliefs underpin the use of T&CMs for health interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.