Cervical cancer screening: knowledge and perceptions of women of reproductive age attending Mnazi Mmoja hospital, Ilala municipal, Dar es salaam

Abstract

Background: Cervical cancer is the third common cancer among women worldwide, about 500,000 new cases are identified for the first time to have cervical cancer and 250,000 deaths occur every year. Aim is to describe the knowledge and perceptions of cervical cancer screening among women of reproductive age attending Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Ilala Municipal, Dar-es –Salaam. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional descriptive research used to collect data at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Ilala Municipal. Participants were 184 women of reproductive age (15-49 years) attended reproductive and child health care clinics. A structured questionnaire was used to gather information and data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 software package. Chi-square test was used to find out the significance differences between variables and p- value of less than 0.05 was considered significant in this analysis. Results: Most of respondents were aware about cervical cancer 152 (82.6%) and screening 149 (81%). Majority of women (54.3%) did not know the standard time for frequencies of cervical cancer screening that is every three years for the VIA test negative women and every year for women diagnosed to have precancerous lesion. Further, more than half (54.3%) claimed that cervical cancer screening (CCS) is performed after every six months. The association between demographic characteristics and knowledge of CCS, age of respondents (p- value 0.041) and marital status (p- value 0.004) found to be statistically significant association (p<0.05). Also association between demographic characteristics and perceptions of CCS, only marital status (p- value 0.021) and level of education (p- value 0.002) showed statistically significant (p<0.05). Conclusion: The findings revealed limited knowledge, on how often VIA test is needed to be done for screening of cervical cancer and about when the interval cancer screening is being done. Lack of awareness of the services provision and shortage of medical advices were the barriers reported for poor uptake of VIA test among the respondents.

Recommendations: Extensive health education programs to the public should be done to improve public knowledge with an emphasis that VIA test is the best standard for prevention of cervical cancer. Further research study should be conducted using mixed methods to explore the hindrance of women to perform cervical cancer screening to prevent the condition.