Awareness of Cervical Cancer and Its Screening among Post-natal Clients at a Tertiary Hospital in Nigeria

Background: Awareness of cervical cancer screening is a vital first step in the prevention programme of cervical cancer in any population. The study sought to determine the awareness and identify the sources of information on cervical cancer and screening uptake among post-partum women receiving care at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Yenagoa between June to October 2018.

Methodology: In a cross-sectional descriptive study, one hundred and four (104) researcher-developed questionnaires were used for data collection. The same was researcher-administered to and retrieved from the respondents (52 HIV-positive and 52 HIV-Negative), with data on sociodemographic characteristics, awareness of cervical screening programmes and methods, sources of information, factors related to cervical cancers and uptake of cervical screening services obtained. Data analysis was limited to univariate analysis, variables were summarized by frequencies and proportions using SPSS for windows.

Results: The study participants were mostly young women with a mean age of 31.12 + 4.46. The majority had basic education (94.1%) and were married (97.1%) with most in a monogamous family setting (98.0%) About half were multiparous women (52.9%). Only 39.2% of participants have heard about cervical cancer; 17.3% about cervical screening and only 1% had utilized (uptake) the screening programme. The main sources of information were health workers (47.5%) and print /mass media (47.5%). Identified factors included having more than one sexual partner (80.4%), multiparity (62.7%) and hormonal contraceptive use (37.3%).

Conclusion: Despite being a preventable disease, there was a low level of awareness about cervical cancer, its screening and virtually non-uptake of screening services in the studied population. The findings suggest a need to pursue and implement effective communication and service provision strategies to increase the awareness of cervical cancer and uptake of cervical screening services in this population.