Correlates of Knoledge on Cervical Cancer among female Students of College of Health Science,Addis Ababa University,Ethiopia
Creators: name: Tariku, Rozina
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2016

description: Introduction: Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer affecting women of reproductive age. It causes 270,000 annual deaths, of which most occur in low- and middle-income countries. Cervical cancer screening has been consistently shown to be effective in reducing the incidence rate or the occurrence of new cervical cancer cases and mortality from the disease. However, cervical cancer screening attendance rate are still far from satisfactory in many countries. In Ethiopia, an estimated 7,600 new cervical cancer cases are diagnosed annually. Medicine and health science students are young students within the most vulnerable age bracket for HPV infection, and by virtue of their discipline they are expected to have good knowledge of HPV vaccine as well as HPV infection and its relation to cervical cancer. However, the knowledge on cervical cancer among health science students in Ethiopia has not been adequately studied. General objective: To assess the correlates of knowledge on cervical cancer among female students in College of Health Sciences of Addis Ababa University Methods: Institution based cross sectional quantitative study was conducted on randomly selected female students from all departments of the College of Health Sciences from March – April, 2016. To obtain a representative sample, simple random sampling was applied to select study participants from the source population. First, all schools and departments in the university were identified by name. Next the calculated sample size (437) was distributed to each School and Department in the college using probability proportional to size (PPS). And the numbers of female students required for the study in each school and department were determined. For the data entry and analysis EpiInfo 7 and STATA12.0 were used. Also statistical analysis was employed (binary and multivariate logistic regression). Result: Out of the total 437students 11 students returned the questionnaires with incomplete response. This gives a total response rate of 98%. The mean age of the participants was 22 years (+/- 2 SD) ranging from 18 to 32. Great majority of the IX participants 397(93.1%) mentioned that cancer of the uterine cervix is a female genital tract problem. A total of 399(93%) participants have heard of cervical cancer, 389(91.3%) of knew that HPV is risk factor of cervical cancer. Overall, 309(72.5%) had good knowledge and 117(27.4%) had poor knowledge. Similar proportion of the respondents, 332(77.7%), had positive attitude while 95(22.2%) had negative attitude. Among sexually active respondents only 5(5.3%) of the female students underwent cervical cancer screening test. Students in the School of Allied Health Sciences were two times more likely (95%CI 1.02, 3.4) to have good knowledge compared to the students from School of Medicine. Students whose fathers had primary level education were50% less likely (95%CI 0.25, 0.92) to have good knowledge compared to students whose fathers had college and above level education. Conclusion: Overall, female health science students had good knowledge on and attitude toward cervical cancer. However, only very small proportion of had screening for cervical cancer. The study also revealed that type of school of the students and their fathers' education levels were significantly associated with their knowledge cervical cancer. Recommendation: Establishing accessible screening program both on national and regional levels as well in higher institution in order to target students to cervical cancer screening for ministry of health. Further study should be conducted at schools, community and national level to target all females and to solve other unclear findings.