Medicinal plants used for treating cancer in Kenya: an ethnopharmacological overview

Abstract

Cancer is listed among the leading causes of deaths globally and a great twenty-first century barrier to the increase in life expectancy (Chimezie and Ofure 2022; Dalmartello et al. 2021; Wekha et al. 2021). According to recent global statistics based on GLOBOCAN, about 19.3 million new cancer cases were reported in 2020. This led to at least 10 million cancer deaths (Sung et al. 2021). For this period, breast cancer was the most prevalent, with 2.3 million new cases (11.7%). The other malignances followed the order: stomach cancer (5.6%) < prostate cancer (7.3%) < colorectal cancer (10.0%) < lung cancer (11.4%). Nevertheless, lung cancer was the major cause of cancer-related mortalities accounting for about 18% (1.8 million) deaths. Colorectal (9.4%), liver (8.3%), stomach (7.7%) and breast (6.9%) cancers also made significant contributions to the estimated cancer mortalities