Assessment of womens’ knowlegde, attitude and beliefs towards cervical cancer screening in Nakaseke Health Center, Central Uganda

Abstract

Cervical Cancer is the second commonest cancer affecting the women, where virtually all cases are connected to human papillomavirus genital infection. Women living in urban centers take cervical cancer infection as bad luck and don’t want to know if they have it. Women who do not go for screening claim that once they go for screening people around them will think they are having sex and since they are not active sexually, they do not have to go for any testing and this common among the Hispanic and Asian. In Uganda, cervical cancer is taken as the number one most frequent cancer among women and also as the 2nd most common cancer among women aged 15-44 years. An estimation of approximately 40 women in every100,000 develop Cervical Cancer in Uganda. It has been confirmed by statistics about half of the women with Cervical Cancer die within three years of diagnosis. The most common malignancy among women living in Mbarara is cervical cancer, in West Nile District,it is the second commonest and among women in Kyadondo County,it accounts for over 80% of female cancers, Kampala District, where a well-established population-based cancer registry exists. It has been confirmed by statistics that cancer is deadly for women in Uganda. In sub Saharan Africa, cervical cancer is still one of the major causes of death among women of reproductive age. It must be noted that there is little information on the level of awareness and perceived risk among the women that live in the peri urban slums which most of these are of reproductive age.