Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Among Residents of Wayu Town, Western Ethiopia

Complementary and alternative medicine covers a wide variety of therapies and practices, which vary from country to country and region to region. The study was conducted to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of complementary and alternative medicine among the residents of Wayu town, Western Ethiopia. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 302 residents. A systematic sampling was used to select households. Data were entered in SPSS (version 20; IBM Corp) and descriptive statistics was carried out. Of 302 participants, 51.65% have a good knowledge, 78.6% were aware of complementary and alternative medicine, and 74.22% used it in the past 2 years. A total of 23.83% believe that complementary and alternative medicine is more effective than modern medicine and 28.8% preferred complementary and alternative medicine to modern medicine. This study revealed that in Wayu town, there is relatively high public interest in complementary and alternative medicine practices and a significant number has a good knowledge but generally the attitude toward complementary and alternative medicine is relatively low.