Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
[Preprint]. 2023 Apr 14:rs.3.rs-2791526.
doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-2791526/v1.

Improving cervical cancer continuum of care towards elimination in Ethiopia: a scoping review

Aklilu Endalamaw  1 , Habtamu Alganeh  1 , Muluken Azage  1 , Asmamaw Atnafu  2 , Daniel Erku  3 , Eskinder Wolka  4 , Adane Nigusie  2 , Anteneh Zewdie  4 , Destaw Fetene Teshome  2 , Yibeltal Assefa  5
Affiliations

Improving cervical cancer continuum of care towards elimination in Ethiopia: a scoping review

Aklilu Endalamaw et al. Res Sq. .

Update in

Abstract

Introduction: Cervical cancer is the second-leading cause of death among all cancers in Ethiopia. Ethiopia plans to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem by 2030, following the World Health Organization's call for action. A scoping review was conducted on the status of the cervical cancer continuum towards elimination in Ethiopia.

Methods: We searched articles in PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. All studies conducted on cervical cancer in Ethiopia, irrespective of date of publication, type of article, or language of publication were included. However, conference abstracts, commentaries, and letters to the editors were excluded. We used EndNote x9 software to merge articles from different databases and automatically remove duplicates. Screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts was performed by two co-authors independently. The cancer care continuum was employed as a framework to guide data synthesis and present the findings.

Results: Of the 569 retrieved articles, 159 were included in the review. The found most of articles were about knowledge, attitude, and practice. There were few studies on health-seeking behaviour, perception and acceptability to cervical cancer services and availability and readiness of a screening programme. The review identified that there was inadequate knowledge, attitude and perception about cervical cancer. Screening for cervical cancer is not widely used in Ethiopia. Knowledge and attitude, education status, and income were repeatedly reported as precursors for cervical cancer screening. Most studies concluded a high prevalence of precancerous lesions and cervical cancer, as well as high mortality rates or short survival times. The review also identified that there is huge heterogeneity in findings under each component of the cancer care continuum across time and geographic settings.

Conclusions: Overall, there is inadequate knowledge, perception, health seeking behaviour, screening and treatment services. This implies that the country is lagging behind the targets towards eliminating cervical cancer despite the availability of effective interventions and tools. We argue that an implementation research is needed to identify implementation issues, challenges and strategies to scale up both primary and secondary prevention services so that cervical cancer will not anymore be a public health problem.

Keywords: Attitude; Cervical Cancer; Ethiopia; Knowledge; Mortality; Perception.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
cervical cancer care/control continuum model used to report review findings
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Sung H, Ferlay J, Siegel RL, Laversanne M, Soerjomataram I, Jemal A, et al. Global cancer statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA: a cancer journal for clinicians. 2021;71(3):209–49. - PubMed
    1. Ginsburg O, Bray F, Coleman MP, Vanderpuye V, Eniu A, Kotha SR, et al. The global burden of women’s cancers: a grand challenge in global health. The Lancet. 2017;389(10071):847–60. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arbyn M, Weiderpass E, Bruni L, de Sanjosé S, Saraiya M, Ferlay J, et al. Estimates of incidence and mortality of cervical cancer in 2018: a worldwide analysis. The Lancet Global Health. 2020;8(2):e191–e203. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bruni L, Albero G, Serrano B, Mena M, Collado JJ, Gómez D, Muñoz J, Bosch FX, de Sanjosé S. ICO/IARC Information Centre on HPV and Cancer (HPV Information Centre). Human Papillomavirus and Related Diseases in Ethiopia. Summary Report 10 March 2023.
    1. Zhang X, Zeng Q, Cai W, Ruan W. Trends of cervical cancer at global, regional, and national level: data from the Global Burden of Disease study 2019. BMC public health. 2021;21(1):1–10. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources