Abstract:

Background: The use of herbal medicines among PLHIV is commonly practiced with the aim of managing of its side effects, treatment of opportunistic infections, HIV itself and other primary healthcare needs.

Methodology: This study was conducted at care and treatment clinic involving 375 participants where data was collected using self-administered questionnaire and other information fetched from patients medical record. Data collected was analysed using STATA version 15 and association between factors was considered significant when a p-value of less than 0.05 was found.

Results: This study involved 375 participants where females were 248 and males were 127 whereby the mean age was 39.2 years and most participants were married. Majority of participants were residing in urban areas compared to few who live in rural areas. The prevalence of herbal medicine use in concurrent with antiretroviral therapy was about 35% of the study participants. Factors such as chronic medical condition, oneself taking care of stored drugs and female gender were the factors associated with the use of herbal medicines among HIV infected individuals. The most used herbal medicines were Allium sativum 32 (24.2%), Zingiber officinale 30 (22.7%), Moringa oleifera 23 (17.4%) and Aloe vera 19 (14.4%).

Conclusion: The prevalence of herbal medicine use in concurrent with the ART was to only 35% of study respondents in which different factors have been sown to be associated with its use such as female gender, oneself care of stored medication and occurrence of chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, PUD and Diabetes mellitus. Viral load suppression was not associated with the use of herbal medicine among the studied participants.