A Study on Knowledge Attitude and Practise of Cervical Cancer Screening and its Prevention by HPV Vaccination among Medical College Students
摘要
Cancer cervix is a major health concern in low- and middle-income countries. Medical students are future pillars of health care and may play a pivot role in eliminating cervical cancer. The present study has been conducted in order to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of medical students regarding cervical cancer, and also sensitize them about preventive measures of cervical cancer in the form of screening and Human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination.
MethodologyThis online questionnaire based cross-sectional study was conducted among the female medical undergraduate students studying at medical colleges of Bihar, India.
ResultOnly 376 complete responses were included for data analysis. The mean age of the participants were 23.4years. 17.5% of the participants were sexually active. Most of the participants (35.3%) were from 1st professional year of MBBS.348 students have heard about cervical cancer and school and college was the commonest source of information (32.9%). Only 18/376 of the participants were vaccinated against HPV infection. 81.8% of the participants were having satisfactory to good knowledge about cervical cancer. The knowledge, attitude and practice score (KAP score) of the study participants showed statistical significant association with the age, their professional year of study, marital status and socioeconomic status (p-value <0.00001).
ConclusionThe study inferred that the female medical undergraduate students have good knowledge about cancer cervix but still there is knowledge gap regarding its prevention.