| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 國際衛生碩士學位學程 === 104 === Background: Cervical cancer is the most frequent cancer among the population in Swaziland, but the utilization of screening services remains very low. The study purpose was to explore the knowledge, attitudes and practice on cervical cancer screening and to identify associated factors among men and women.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Manzini and Shiselweni regions in Swaziland, including 202 men and 213 women aged 30–65 years. The participants were interviewed at their homes by trained field workers using separate but similar questionnaire for men and women. Chi square test was used for descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression to explore factors that determine knowledge, attitude and practice on cervical cancer.
Results: The majority of the participants (77.8%) were from rural areas and 54.5% were aged between 30 to 39 years. About two thirds of the participants (61.5%) had a level of education of secondary school and above and only one fifth of the participants (20.0%) had formal employment. More than ninety percent of the participants were Christians, the remaining (8.7%) were none religious.
About half (53.5%) of the women and (22.8%) of men could name at least one symptom or sign of cervical cancer and 240 (58.1%) of the participants had misconceptions on the risk factors of cervical cancer in our study. Among women participants 79.3% had a positive attitude towards cervical cancer screening and 61.4% of men had positive attitude toward screening.
Among men with partners 81.4% reported that they would allow their partners to be screened for cervical cancer. On multivariate analysis men with less misconception, heard of screening and with no preference of the gender of the health care worker were significantly more likely to report that they would allow their partners to be screened.
Only 5.2% of the women in our study had ever been screened using Pap smear test. Women who knew a cervical cancer victim, received advice from a health care worker and had less misconception were more likely to be screened for cervical cancer. More than 30% of the participants perceived fear of pain, lack of money, absence of cervical cancer symptoms and busy health care workers as barriers to cervical cancer screening.
Conclusions: Knowledge about cervical cancer and screening is still relatively poor in Swaziland. There is therefore still need for comprehensive educations on cervical cancer which may help to eliminate misconceptions on the disease thus improve screening uptake. Knowledge and attitude is even poorer among men in Swaziland. There is therefore a need to ensure men are also targeted in future awareness campaigns.
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