Abstract
Cervical cancer is a serious health concern in Uganda. Early screening and detection certainly improves chances of survival and treatment outcome. Sound knowledge and positive attitudes highly influence acceptability and uptake of screening methods. This descriptive cross-sectional study determines knowledge and attitudes towards Cervical Cancer screening amongst female out-patients aged 15 - 49 years, attending Health Centre IIIs in Oyam District, Northern Uganda. A systematically obtained sample of 445 respondents was interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires and focused group discussions. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 16.0. Directed content analysis of themes of transcribed qualitative data was conducted manually. Of the 445 respondents, only 62.7% (n = 279) had heard of cervical cancer amongst which only 35.1% (n = 85) had been screened; 13.7% (n = 34) did not know what screening was; 3.7% (n = 9) were not sure and 5.8% (n = 14) knew it as removal of the cervix. Only 39.1% (n = 174) believed that cervical cancer can be prevented. There is still limited knowledge and lots of misconceptions about cervical cancer screening in the communities, which requires massive sensitization of the population at risk to change negative attitudes and maximize acceptability to screening methods.
Highlights
Every year, 7.6 million lives are lost to cancer worldwide more than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined [1]
Majority 80.5% (n = 194) had heard information about cervical cancer screening from health workers, 7.1% (n = 17) from posters, others had heard it from radios and friends
Cervical cancer screening was acceptable amongst female out patients attending health Centre IIIs in Oyam district, there are still mixed reactions and wrong perceptions about the intervention. 62.7% had heard of cervical cancer in the present study
Summary
7.6 million lives are lost to cancer worldwide more than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined [1]. A new report by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) suggests that the incidence of cancer worldwide will grow by 75% by the year 2030, nearly doubling in some of the developing countries. Those increases will put a much larger burden on the poorly developed healthcare systems in such countries because care of cancer is much more expensive than care for infectious diseases [2]. Among women in the urban setting, the development of Cervical Cancer is just bad luck and they do not want to know if they have it. Women who do not get screened often mention that they do not get tested because others will think they are having sex and if they are not sexually active, they do not need to be screened among the Hispanic and Asian [4]
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