Assessment of awareness, perception, specific knowledge, and screening behaviour regarding breast cancer among rural women in Ipokia Local Government Area, Ogun State, Nigeria

摘要

The objective of this study was to evaluate the level of awareness, perception, specific knowledge, and screeningbehaviour towards Breast Cancer among rural women in Ipokia local government area of Ogun state, Nigeria. Itwas a cross-sectional design study, utilizing a pre-tested 36-item questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.62) tocollect information about knowledge regarding Breast Cancer, perceived susceptibility and seriousness, perceivedbenefits of screening and screening behaviour among women in the study location. One thousand, one hundred andninety-four respondents were recruited for the study by systematic random selection of women in the community.Results indicated that the mean age of participants was 28.24 (Standard Error of Mean (SEM) 0.47) years. Anappreciable number of the respondents, 672(56.3%) were married, 58.1% have primary school education, 17%obtained senior secondary school certificate as their highest level of education while 24.9% have no formaleducation. There were 466(39%) Muslims, 19.7% Christians and 41.3% traditional religion worshipers among theparticipants. Knowledge about breast cancer as an important disease in women measured on a 12-point scalerecorded a mean score of 4.97 (SEM 0.15) and perception of breast cancer considered in three sub-domains ofsusceptibility, seriousness and benefit, measured on a 30-point scale, recorded a mean score of 17.65 (SEM 0.18);while screening behaviour, measured on an 11-point scale, showed that respondents recorded a mean score of 2.40(SEM 0.071). Also 468(39.2%) of the respondents reported having heard about breast cancer while 1131(94.7%)have heard of gonorrhoea as a condition affecting women. The findings suggest that the level of awareness aboutbreast cancer among women in this study was low while their level of perception was just above average andscreening behaviour was very low. Again, perception variables positively and significantly correlated withscreening behaviour among the participants. There should be a serious awareness drive, education andcommunication strategies packaged towards these women, to reinforce their positive trends. An aggressive healthpromotion intervention must be urgently designed so as to encourage regular screening for breast cancer amongwomen in the rural communities.