Knowledge attitudes and practices of cervical cancer screening among urban and rural Nigerian women: a call for education and mass screening

Abstract

The incidence of cervical cancer has declined in developed nations due to routine use of cervical cancer screening services. In developing nations opportunistic screening is the practice, and many women present with late-stage disease. This study was designed to ascertain the knowledge of the women in Nigeria to cervical cancer, their practice of cervical cancer screening and factors hindering the use of available screening services. A cross-sectional study was done with interviewer-administered questionnaire. Only the consenting women attending an annual Christian religious meeting in 2007 in three towns in Enugu, South Eastern Nigeria participated. Only 15.5% of the respondents were aware of availability of cervical cancer screening services. The awareness significantly varied with the level of educational attainment (P<0.0001). Only 4.2% had ever done Pap smear test and all were referred for screening. The most important factors hindering the use of available cervical cancer screening services were lack of knowledge (49.8%) and the feeling that they had no medical problems (32.0%). There is very poor knowledge and practice of cervical cancer screening among Nigerian women. Effective female education and free mass screening are necessary for any successful cervical cancer screening programme in Nigeria.

Factors Influencing Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening among Female Health Workers in University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State

“…A considerable reduction in cervical cancer incidence and deaths has been achieved in developed nations with systematic cytological smear screening programme 14 . This finding was also supported by the observations of other findings which reported the non-existence of a national cytology screening, the lack of political -will and funding, poor advocacy and man power were identified as the cause of the continuous high prevalence of this preventable cancer in Nigeria 8 ; that awareness creation and local provision of services will improve knowledge and practice of cervical cancer screening among the respondent 15 ; despite been the commonest cancer of women in Uganda there is no systematic screening programme for cervical cancer, Pap smear based screening programmes are not feasible in low resource settings like Uganda due to economical and logistic reasons like lack of trained pathologist and equipped laboratories2006) 12 . This therefore, calls for attention of the administration of health institutions and policy makers to ensure that adequate consideration is given to all that are required to promote and encourage screening by giving high priority to cervical cancer screening, making policies, creating programme and allocating sufficient funds to encourage procurement of vaccines, screening equipments, promoting follow up of result of screening, early diagnosis and treatment of identified cases.…”

“…The most important factors hindering the use of available cervical cancer screening services were lack of knowledge (49.8%) and the feeling that they had no problem (32.0%) 7 . The non existence of a national cervical cytology screening, the lack of political-will and funding, poor advocacy and poor man power were identified as the cause of the continuous high prevalence of this preventable cancer in Nigeria 8 . Female health workers are expected to be in a better position to create a wider range of awareness about the importance of cervical cancer screening.…”

Comprehensive Knowledge and Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening is Low Among Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Northwest Ethiopia

“…The investigators were properly trained on the instrument and ways of approaching the patients and securing potential participants permission for the interview prior to the commencement of the study. The data collection tool was developed after a thorough literature review of the published studies [17][18][19][20] and was primarily prepared in English. This was translated to local language (Amharic) and then back to English by an expert in the area in order to ensure that the translated version gives the proper meaning.…”

Priority Setting for Improvement of Cervical Cancer Prevention in Iran

“…Lack of awareness was reported to be a major factor that may influence participation of women in cervical screening. 28,29 In addition to the affordability and access to cervical screening service, awareness and positive attitudes of women and their families about cervical screening is an important factor for success of screening program. [30][31][32] Several studies have reported that Iranian women have little information about cervical screening and importance of ICC prevention.…”