Table 3.
Labeling process
| Side effects of treatment | |
|---|---|
| 1. | “I also met someone yesterday, who takes cancer treatment and he had nausea and vomiting and was weak. A doctor told him that the treatment was causing that.” (East London Church group) |
| 2. | “I also hear about the brain, the hair sometimes fall off because of it.” (Khayelitsha Church Group) |
| 3. | “Even when people saw children on TV without hair they would have no idea what is wrong. After it affected a celebrity people got to know about it.” (Soweto NGO group) |
| 4. | “…they would be disturbed, thinking about the hair, that when you comb it, it will fall off.” (East London Political and Community Leaders’ group) |
| 5 | “I got information from a friend that a person must not dump his wife because her breasts are cut off, that’s how he told me.” (East London Church Group) |
| Diagnosis by traditional healer | |
| 6. | “People first come to us as traditional healers before going to the doctors and clinics…” (East London Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 7. | “With us, people just come any time; we do not have a practice that opens at certain times like 8am to 6pm” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 8. | “The first thing I would do as the person who believes in traditional medicine, I would go to a traditional person who would help me.” (East London Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 9. | “When we grew up cancer was a White people disease. We used to eat wild fruits and roots and never used to get sick… We as traditional healers use herbs that are organic to treat” (Khayelitsha Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 10. | “People never used to die so much in the olden days when they were using traditional medicines” (Khayelitsha Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 11. | “Some come having been diagnosed already by the doctors but are scared of operations and opt for traditional medicine” (Khayelitsha Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 12. | “We black people have this belief that there are sicknesses that come as a result of witchcraft. You find someone who will not seek medical help early enough because they were told that they have been bewitched. I have a relative who has been sick for a long time and has been going to sangomas who tell her she has been bewitched, but this year she was diagnosed with cancer.” (Soweto Political and Community Leaders’ group) |
| 13. | “We don’t have the x-rays to see where the cancer is hence we send them to the doctor.” (East London Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 14. | “If someone comes to me [traditional healer] complaining of pain, I will tell them to go to the doctors who can examine them using sophisticated machinery before I can try and treat them” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group). |
| Official biomedical diagnosis | |
| 15. | “You may have just taken your sister to a white doctor and you may not understand any word except the word cancer. (Soweto Political and Community Leaders’ group). |
| 16. | “It is true that people do not go to the clinic. I think there should be a group going door to door (to detect individuals with cancer) because… some (people) are scared of being diagnosed.” (East London church group) |
| 17. | “I had something in my throat, it started off like something like a ball, when I swallowed it would feel like it is going down. I went to the clinic and I was given tablets that I don’t know what they were. I never went to the doctor again, but I still feel it because I am very scared to go to the doctor. I don’t know whether it is cancer or what.” (Khayelitsha Political and Community Leaders group) |