Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Knowledge on cervical cancer and perceived barriers to the uptake of
HPV vaccination among health professionals.
Version: 
1 
Date: 
04 Aug 2020
Reviewer's report:
The manuscript is much improved, but there is still some work to be done. The
language is still not great and I hate to persist in this point, but indicating that
29% of the sample had cervical screening and comparing it to previous research,
when the males in the sample were not eligible for this makes no sense. This
statistic needs to be reported with the males factored out - assuming the
proportion is out of all the females sampled, this makes uptake at 37%, if some
of the women answered not applicable, they can also be removed from the
eligible sample. You say in the discussion that 19.8% had been vaccinated, but in
the table, this stat is for them or their family members. Assuming that the 19.8%
is just for the respondents, and the over 30s were not eligible, then those eligible
individuals vaccinated increases to 24.8%. There are inferences drawn in the
discussion which are not warranted - ie that ongoing screening is a barrier to
vaccination (something you did not ask). This either needs a reference or it needs
to be withdrawn. Furthermore, in the limitations, an obvious limitation is that
there are no questions about knowledge of how HPV impacts males which is
something that will very likely affect male uptake and is important for health
care professionals to be aware of in order to effectively recommend vaccination. 
I did not understand the comment about surveys and interactive programmes
helping to develop a positive attitude.
By changing the title in accordance with another reviewer, it is more relevant but
no longer chimes with the introduction which suggests that the study is to
explore knowledge since this is needed to 'sensitise' patients (this wording needs
to be amended). 
It is unclear if the authors are interested more in the health care
professionals' own uptake or their knowledge to facilitate others' uptake or both.
The penultimate sentence on page 20 doesn't make sense - it's lacking a few
words.
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