Assessment of Knowledge and Attitude towards Cervical Cancer and Screening among Female Students at Menlik ll Health Science College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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Date
2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background:Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women worldwide.About 83% of the cases occur in developing countries, representing 15% of female cancers .InEthiopia, prevalent cancer among women between 15 and 44 years of age with age specificincidence rate of 15.6/1000.Carcinoma of the cervix is a preventable disease; itsprevention, among other ways, is throughscreening and detection of premalignant stages of the disease and treatment. Detection of thecervical cancer however requires knowledge of the disease and cervical cancer screeningprocedure so that people can be aware and positive towards screening but in Ethiopia little hasbeen explored about knowledge and attitude of women towards cervical cancer screening.Objective: To assess knowledge and attitude of Female Students aged >18 years towardsCervical Cancer Screening in Menlik II Health Science College of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia fromMarch 23 to April 30 2015.
Methods:A cross-sectional institutional basedstudy was conducted on a sample of 292 FemaleStudents aged>18 years in Menlik II Health Science College of Addis Ababa Ethiopia usingsimple random sampling method .Data on knowledge status of mothers regrinding cervicalcancer screening, attitude of female students towards cervical cancer screening and otherpertinent variableswere collected using self-administered questionnaires .The gathered data wasanalysis the software SPSS version 20.
ResultsGenerally the knowledge was poor, attitude was positive to majority of respondents. Theresults showed that 65(22.2%) had poor knowledge, 180(61.4%) had satisfactory knowledge andonly 48(16.4%) had good knowledge. Overall 168(57.7%) of the respondents were positiveabout cervical cancer screening.
Conclusions and recommendations:The study has shown that there is a lack of knowledgeoncervical cancer towards screening for premalignant cervical lesion.There is a need to promote cervical cancer screening among women by Informing or teach themon their susceptibility to cervical cancer and encouraging a belief that active and regularscreening can detect cervical cancer at the pre-cancerous stage, hence enabling them earlytreatment and prevention of cancer development. There is also a need for provision of Affordablescreening services all over the country to enable women, after being motivated, to go forscreening.
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Knowledge, attitude, Female, Students, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia