Knowledge about cervical cancer and barriers toward cervical cancer screening among HIV‐positive women attending public health centers in Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia

Abstract

Screening rate for cervical cancer among HIV‐infected women and among women overall is low in Ethiopia despite the high burden of the disease and HIV infection, which increases cervical cancer risk. In this paper, we assessed knowledge about cervical cancer symptoms, prevention, early detection, and treatment and barriers to screening among HIV‐positive women attending community health centers for HIV‐infection management in Addis Ababa. A cross‐sectional survey of 581 HIV‐positive women aged 21–64 years old attending 14 randomly selected community health centers without cervical cancer screening service in Addis Ababa. We used univariate analysis to calculate summary statistics for each variable considered in the analysis, binary logistic regression analysis to measure the degree of association between dependent and independent variables, and multiple regressions for covariate adjusted associations. Statistical significance for all tests was set at P < 0.05. We used thematic analysis to describe the qualitative data. Of the 581 women enrolled in the study with mean age 34.9 ± 7.7 years, 57.8% of participants had heard of cervical cancer and 23.4% were knowledgeable about the symptoms, prevention, early detection, and treatment of the disease. In multivariate analysis, higher educational attainment and employment were significantly associated with good knowledge about cervical cancer. In addition, only 10.8% of the participants ever had screening and 17% ever received recommendation for it. However, 86.2% of them were willing to be screened if free of cost. Knowledge about cervical cancer is poor and cervical cancer screening rate and provider recommendation are low among HIV‐positive women attending community health centers for management and follow‐up of their disease in Addis Ababa. These findings underscore the need to scale up health education about cervical cancer prevention and early detection among HIV‐positive women as well as among primary healthcare providers in the city.

Women’s knowledge of and attitudes toward cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening in Zanzibar, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study

“…Additionally, our study is the first to analyze women's worries about cervical cancer screening among women of different age groups, reaching the conclusion that women in the younger age and older age groups in Zanzibar should be the focus of knowledge education. This baseline study highlights the great lack of knowledge about cervical cancer, which is consistent with other studies conducted in Ethiopia and Kenya [10,11]. The low level of cervical cancer awareness is likely the greatest contributing factor to cervical cancer-related morbidity and mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries.…”

“…This result is unsurprising because they have no symptoms or discomfort, given the poor awareness of cervical cancer screening. One study conducted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, found similar findings, in that the most frequently mentioned barrier was women feeling healthy and thinking that such screening was unnecessary, followed by perceiving fear of positive results and the pain of the screening [10]. These findings suggest that campaigns to improve women's cognitions of cervical cancer and screening are likely to be effective at breaking through such barriers.…”

Women’s knowledge and attitudes toward cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening in Zanzibar, Tanzania: a cross- sectional study

“…Barriers to free screening uptake This baseline study highlight the great lack of knowledge about cervical cancer, which is consistent with other studies conducted in Ethiopia and Kenya [9,10]. The low level of perception towards cervical cancer is likely the most contributing factor to cervical cancer-related morbidity and mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries.…”

“…Worrying about been affected is another common barrier. One study conducted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia had similar findings, in that the most frequently mentioned barrier was women were feeling healthy and thought it was unnecessary, followed by perceiving fear of positive results and pain of the screening [9]. These results suggest an urgent need to disseminate knowledge about cervical cancer and its association with screening, and they further suggest that campaigns to improve cognition of cervical cancer and screening are likely to be effective at breaking through those barriers.…”

Women’s knowledge of and attitudes toward cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening in Zanzibar, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study

“…This baseline study highlights the great lack of knowledge about cervical cancer, which is consistent with other studies conducted in Ethiopia and Kenya [10,11]. The low level of cervical cancer awareness is likely the greatest contributing factor to cervical cancer-related morbidity and mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries.…”