Health-Seeking Behavior and Patterns of Traditional Medicine Patronage Among Breast Cancer Patients in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract Globally, breast cancer accounted for an estimated 2.30 million new cases and 764,000 deaths in 2023, with Nigeria recording the highest incidence in West Africa at 50.5 per 100,000 women. Incidence figures alone conceal a quieter crisis: across Nigeria’s underfunded, urban-centred healthcare system, where nearly 90% of treatment costs are paid out-of-pocket and a complete biomedical protocol can cost between ₦5 million and ₦40 million. Thus, a substantial number of patients abandon hospital oncology altogether in favour of Traditional Medicine Practitioners (TMPs). This study investigated the sociocultural, economic and psychological drivers behind this pattern of care-seeking among breast cancer patients in Ibadan and Iseyin, Oyo State. Drawing on Critical Medical Anthropology, Cultural Relativism and the Health Belief Model, the study adopted a qualitative ethnographic design involving twenty-five key informants with five purposively selected TMPs and twenty patients recruited through snowball sampling. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted in the Yoruba language and analysed thematically. Five interlocking drivers emerged and the are: catastrophic treatment costs precipitating financial defection; psychological resistance to mastectomy as a threat to bodily wholeness and womanhood; the visible toxicity of chemotherapy, including hair loss, and its social consequences; a cosmological understanding of the illness as Afowofa, an affliction of spiritual origin requiring ritual redress through practices such as Ifa divination and ebo alongside herbal treatment; and lay referral networks that circulate testimonies of recovery. These findings suggested that patronage of TMPs is not a failure of awareness but a structured, rational response to systemic constraint. Keywords: Breast Cancer; Ethnomedicine; HealthSeeking Behavior; Traditional Practitioners; Cultural Relativis