Clinical relevance and use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicines for the management of HIV infection in local African communities, 1989-2014: A review of selected literature

Abstract Despite the success of combination antiretroviral treatment and limited evidence on safety and efficacy of complementary and alternative medicines, many HIV –infected individuals in the developed world have used the latter practices. On the African continent p eople diagnosed with HIV infection had consulted a traditional health practitioner prior to conventional antiretroviral therapy and sometimes after joining antiretroviral programme. We identified 16 relevant publications. Ten studies reported results either on increase of CD4 count or decrease in viral load (VL); the other six studies reported improvement on quality of life and HIV related symptoms. Although scepticism exists towards the effectiveness of medication therapies administered by traditional healers, initiatives promoting collaboration between traditional healers and biomedical trained health care workers provide a relative evidence of traditional medicinal knowledge for HIV management.