Knowledge and Awareness about Preventive Health Seeking Behavior and Acceptability of Cervical Cancer Vaccine in Urban Women in Comparison with School Students

Background: In India, cervical cancer is the single largest killer of middle-aged women, followed by breast cancer. Though the effective screening test is available, most of the women in developing and underdeveloped countries do not have access to Pap (papanicolou) smear screening due to poor literacy and low level of awareness both early detection and screening remain a major area of concern for health care persons. Objective: To explore knowledge and awareness about preventive health seeking behavior and acceptability of cervical cancer vaccine in urban women in comparison with school students. Materials and methods: This was a prospective study conducted to compare the awareness between 236 urban women attending the antenatal, gynaec and postdelivery outpatients and inpatients and 132 students aged between 12 to 14 years. A questionnaire was designed to tap the information about cervix-related questions, cancer cervix awareness and also about the Pap test and HPV vaccine. Results: Overall 29.55% and urban women 19.07% did not know about the cervix. Overall, 79.55% students and 74.15% of urban women did not know about symptomatology of cervical cancer. Overall, 34.09% of students and 38.98% of women did not know about prevention of cervical cancer. Out of the total participants, 35.61% of students and 44.07% of women knew that death will happen, if cancer cervix was not treated or controlled for a long period. Conclusion: Attempts to educate parents/peers and students themselves would intensify the awareness and improve the usage of the HPV vaccines in the desired cohort.