Objective: Human papilloma virus has strong correlation with cervical cancer, which is the second most common cancer worldwide among women. Since 2006 the World Health Organization reported effective vaccines, as preventing cancer with the help of a vaccine is a comparatively new concept, awareness and education about it will have important implication in the implementation of this strategy. The aim is to provide an understanding about awareness and knowledge of HPV and HPV vaccine among medical students in Erbil city.Methods: This questionnaire survey was conducted at Hawler Medical University. About 20 convenient samples from each of the five colleges of the university were chosen. Data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 23.Results: The mean age of the participants was 22 years, 71% (n = 66) have heard of HPV, 64.5% (n = 60) knew that HPV cause genital warts and 51.6% (n = 48) noticed that it cause cervical cancer. Only 37.6% (n = 35) were aware that the HPV vaccine is available to prevent cervical cancer, in addition, the lowest score of awareness was 9.7% (n = 9) in which the vaccine can be given to women already having an infection. About 6.5% (n = 6) reported that they have been vaccinated.Conclusion: There was a highly statistically significant association between level of awareness with age and the college of participants, while there was no statistically significant difference with gender. Generally, the students have moderate knowledge about the virus, but in contrast, they have limited information about the HPV vaccine.
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