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. 2018 Mar 16;18(1):298.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-018-4203-2.

Health seeking behavior and its determinants for cervical cancer among women of childbearing age in Hossana Town, Hadiya zone, Southern Ethiopia: community based cross sectional study

Yitagesu Habtu  1 , Samuel Yohannes  2 , Tariku Laelago  3
Affiliations

Health seeking behavior and its determinants for cervical cancer among women of childbearing age in Hossana Town, Hadiya zone, Southern Ethiopia: community based cross sectional study

Yitagesu Habtu et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Cervical cancer is one of the most easily preventable forms of female cancers if early screening and diagnosis is made. Low awareness level about the disease and risk factors, beliefs about the disease, poor access to preventive services, affordability of the service and current health service system can influence decision to seek health care services for cervical cancer. The objective of this study was to determine health seeking behaviour and determinant factors for cervical cancer in Hossana town.

Methods: Our study was carried out in Hossana town using community based cross-sectional study design. The study population was women of childbearing age (15-49 years) who had the chance of being randomly selected from the source population. Five hundred ninety five women of childbearing age were included in the study. Systematic random sampling technique was employed to select the study units. Structured and pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data. The collected data were cleaned and entered by EPI info version 3.5.4 and analysed by SPSS version 16. We considered P-value < 0.05 to decide statistically significant association between the independent and dependent variables.

Results: The prevalence of health seeking behaviour for cervical cancer among the study participants was only 14.2%. Respondents' poor knowledge [AOR: 7.25, 95% CI: (1.87, 28.08)], not ever received information [AOR: 52.03, 95% CI: (13.77, 196.52)] and not actively searching information about cervical cancer [AOR: 14.23, (95%CI: (3.49, 57.95)] were significantly associated factors with not seeking health for prevention and control of cervical cancer.

Conclusion: The prevalence of health seeking behaviour for cervical cancer is low. Respondent' poor knowledge, not ever received information, and not actively searching information about cervical cancer are significantly associated with not seeking health for cervical cancer prevention and control. This study stressed the importance of increasing knowledge, promoting active search of health information and experiences of receiving information from different sources regarding health seeking behaviour.

Keywords: Cervical cancer; Health seeking behavior; Screening.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical clearance was obtained from Research and Community Service Core Process of Hossana College of Health Sciences. We obtained an official written permission from respective administrative offices in the study area. Participants had been informed about the objectives of the study, confidentiality issues and their autonomy just before the start of data collection. We also obtained informed verbal consent from each study participant to ensure voluntary participation in the study. Informed verbal consent was obtained from the research participants because all the data sought was associated purely with information rather than human samples or did not put participants on experiment, which needs national ethical approval in our context. In addition to this, the institutional review board of the college has given official approval for our research to be conducted in this way. This is the reason why we obtained informed verbal consent than written.

Consent for publication

“Not applicable” in this section.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The level of knowledge about cervical cancer for health seeking behavior in Hossana town, Ethiopia, June 2015
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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