Awareness and Knowledge of Cervical Cancer among Female Senior High School Students in Lower Manya Krobo Municipal in Ghana

Introduction: Cervical cancer is one of the significant public health problems in the world, especially in Less developed countries. In Ghana, cervical cancer is the leading cause of gynecological cancers. This study was aimed at assessing the level of awareness of this dreadful disease among adolescent female Senior High School students in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region of Ghana.

Methods: A cross-sectional study of female adolescents was conducted using self-administered questionnaires to elicit information on demographic characteristics, knowledge, awareness, and perception of cervical cancer. The association of demographic characteristics and other important study variables were investigated. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for questions asked. Logistic regression was used to make predictions.

Findings: The mean age of participants was 16.6 years (±1.6). Majority (63.0%) had heard about the disease. About one-third (30.2%) reported getting their information from Television/Radio with a relatively lower proportion (0.4%) getting their information from the internet. Some risk factors identified by participants were unprotected sex (45.5%), sex at an early age (4.9%), excessive contraceptive use (4.1%). Cervical cancer knowledge was significantly associated with the school of enrollment (P-value 0.013), grade/form (P-value 0.002), and residential status of students (P-value 0.013). A respondent in a single-sex school was 2.98 times more likely to have knowledge of cervical cancer compared to the reference group, adjusting for all other variables. Only 29.3% and 17.7% knew about cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccines respectively.

Conclusions: There exist gaps in the knowledge of cervical cancer among adolescents in this study. There is the need for the creation of more awareness, with a special focus on the associated risk factors of the disease to ensure quality of life for the adolescents in their life course.