Knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward cervical cancer prevention among women in Khartoum state, Sudan

Background Cervical cancer is considered as the third most leading cause of death among female worldwide with most of the deaths were found to occur in the developing countries. Several etiological agents were studied however Human papilloma virus (HPV) is identified as the most common etiological agent that involved in the induction of cervical cancer. The aim of our current study was to assess the Knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward cervical cancer prevention among women in Khartoum state, Sudan. Methods this is a descriptive cross-sectional community-based study. An electronic questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics like frequency, mean and percentage were computed using SPSS version 20.0 software program. Results About 716 females in age between 18 and 74 years old with a mean age 27.58 years (STD 8.74 years) have enrolled in this study. 93.7 of them are educated at university level or higher. Although that 580 (81.0%) of our study participants have heard about cervical cancer only 29 (4.1%) were vaccinated against HPV as a preventive measure against the disease. Conclusion We highly recommended conducting health education sessions for both the Obstetrician and females in reproductive age regarding the benefit of the Pap test in the early detection of the cervical intraepithelial lesions and malignancy as well as HPV vaccination should be introduced in the local healthcare facilities