Awareness of Cervical Cancer and HPV Vaccination and its Affordability in Rural Malaysia

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide after breast cancer. There are about 500,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths due to cervical cancer each year. Almost all cervical cancer cases (99%) are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection (World Health Organization 2006). In Malaysia, the age standardized incidence rate (ASR) for cervical cancer is 19.7 per 100,000 women. This number is twofold of that in the United States of America (USA) (Chye &Yahaya 2003). The Ministry of Health Malaysia reported that there is an average of 2000 to 3000 hospital admissions of cervical cancer cases per year in the country, most of them presenting late into the disease (Al-Dubai et al 2010). The economic burden due to cervical cancer is enormous. It costs about RM312 million (USD $76 million) to manage cervical cancer (from prevention to managing invasive diseases) annually in Malaysia. A big proportion (67%) of this is spent in managing invasive cancer cases (Puteh, Ng &Aljunid 2008) In Malaysia the annual cervical cancer death rate is 5.6 per 100,000 (Cervical Cancer Incidence and Mortality Rates 2011). The mortality rate due to cervical cancer in Malaysia is more than two folds higher in comparison