Men’s knowledge and attitudes about cervical cancer screening in Kenya

Abstract

BackgroundA number of studies have identified male involvement as an important factor affecting reproductive health outcomes, particularly in the areas of family planning, antenatal care, and HIV care. As access to cervical cancer screening programs improves in resource-poor settings, particularly through the integration of HIV and cervical cancer services, it is important to understand the role of male partner support in women’s utilization of screening and treatment.MethodsWe administered an oral survey to 110 men in Western Kenya about their knowledge and attitudes regarding cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening. Men who had female partners eligible for cervical cancer screening were recruited from government health facilities where screening was offered free of charge.ResultsSpecific knowledge about cervical cancer risk factors, prevention, and treatment was low. Only half of the men perceived their partners to be at risk for cervical cancer, and many reported that a positive screen would be emotionally upsetting. Nevertheless, all participants said they would encourage their partners to get screened.ConclusionsFuture interventions should tailor cervical cancer educational opportunities towards men. Further research is needed among both men and couples to better understand barriers to male support for screening and treatment and to determine how to best involve men in cervical cancer prevention efforts.

Knowledge and Practices of Cervical Cancer among Married Men in Rural Phalombe?

“…Therefore it is important for men to know that as they are being involved in sexual relations with more than one woman, the risk of HPV transmission in their spouses" increases. Similar results on low level of knowledge on the cervical cancer cause have also been reported by several studies [18][19][20]16] also found that only 20 % of the study participants knew HPV as a cause of cervical cancer. This is unlike a Ugandan study where some participants believed that too much sex would cause injury to the cervix which might later develop into cervical cancer [20].…”

“…Participants who had gone beyond primary school level were more knowledgeable compared to their counterparts with primary school education and below. This implies that high illiteracy level can impact positively on knowledge about cervical cancer as supported by Aswathy [21,16] who both observed that men who had education beyond secondary school were more knowledgeable whilst those who had gone up to primary or less had the least knowledge scores.…”

“…This finding is different from findings of other studies that involved women as their study participants. Women in these studies ranked health workers as the main source of information [3,16,17]. The difference in these results might be due to the fact that women tend to visit health facilities more often than men for various reasons as narrated by Bocanegra [7,18].…”

“…This might be due to the fact that about 61.1% of the participants were holders of first degrees and beyond. Evidence shows that individuals who are educated are more knowledgeable of various health issues compared to those who are not educated [16,15].…”

Awareness of sexually transmitted infections and cervical cancer among husbands in urban slums of Mumbai, India

“…5 Jolle et al also observed significantly greater knowledge about cervical cancer among men with higher levels of education in their study among men in Kenya. 16 Comparatively low awareness was observed among husbands with technical and unskilled job.…”