**4. Discussion**

The higher incidence of HPV infection, especially in HIV-positive women, and the higher prevalence of cervical cancer in LMICs call for urgent attention. Despite all the efforts of the government to ameliorate HPV infection through immunization and

cervical cancer screening measures, yet not much has been achieved in HPV infection level and reduction in CC prevalence, especially in sub-Sahara Africa [1, 3, 6].

HPV is known to be the most sexually transmitted infection and 40 types of HPV can infect humans. HPV is also implicated in the proliferation of not only CC but other types of cancers [1, 16]. Therefore, eradication or ameliorating of HPV infection becomes imperative and necessary.

Currently, the importance of medicinal plant extracts has been showcased severally in the literature due to their involvement in the production of different drugs, herbal products, and bio-therapeutics for the treatment/management of different diseases.

This study evaluated people's notions of future use of herbal products for the treatment/management of HPV infection. **Table 1** exhibits some of the medicinal plants/active compounds evaluated for antiviral/inhibition of HPV by previous studies with **Figure 7** depicting photographs of some of the plants listed in **Table 1**.

In this study, demographically, the number of females (93) that participated was highly statistically significant (**Figure 1a**) compared to the number of males (21). The reason may be perhaps due to CC cancer being discussed here is one of the women gynecological cancers or questionnaire was more distributed among women online groups. However, HPV infection affects both females and males and can cause other cancers rather than CC. Similar incidence also occurred in the age group (**Figure 1c**) where ages from 35 to 44, 45–54, and 55–64 were the age group that participated. The score value from the age group 45–54 was very high and statically significant compared to other age groups. This is perhaps due to the screening stage of cervical cancer falling in these age groups. Again, the survey questionnaire was mostly distributed among women groups than men groups. For the race, Africans was the most participated (**Figure 1b**). This could be a result of influence due to location and execution of study questionnaire. However, studies have observed that traditional medicine/herbal products are being practiced and used mostly by poor African black communities for their wellbeing [11, 23].

It is quite interesting that a high number of participants (78) already have the knowledge of HPV infection and its impact on the associating types of cancer (**Figure 2**).


#### **Table 1.**

*Some medicinal plants/phytoconstituents that have been evaluated for anti-carcinogenicity for HPV.*

*The Use of Native Flora/Herbal Products in Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Infection… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104742*

**Figure 7.** *Photographs of some of the plants listed in Table 1.*

Only few participants (15) revealed that their relatives had experienced a type of cancer disease due to HPV infection. Consequently, the number of participants recorded with financial burdens was small/few (**Figure 3**).

Additionally, many participants (63) indicated that they have used herbal products for different purposes. However, 43 participants showed that they have never used herbal products for any purpose. This study impressively indicated that almost all the participants (96) know that herbal products can be effectively used singly or in combination for the treatment of diseases (**Figure 5**). This number is highly statistically significant (P-Value = 0.000 < 5%) compared to those without awareness. Furthermore, **Figure 6** of this study indicated the willingness of the participants to support or patronize the use of any native flora/herbal product discovered for the management/treatment of HPV infection.
