Attitudes and Practices of Women Towards Cervical Cancer Screening in Lesotho: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Survey

Abstract

In 2020, Lesotho reported 541 new cases of cervical cancer and 362 women died. This study aimed to assess the attitudes and practices of women towards cervical cancer screening. A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional design was used to collect data from 289 participants who were selected using convenience sampling from 27 health facilities. Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the National University of Lesotho and the Ministry of Health (ID43-2022). The written informed consent was sought from the participants who took part voluntarily. Data were analyzed using the SPSS (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences) version (26). Respondents aged 30 to 34 years (94.0%) and above 35 years (95.9%) had positive attitudes towards cervical cancer screening. Fifty-one percent of the respondents had done cervical cancer screening. Respondents who had two (65.5%) and four to eight children (52.4%) and were employed (64.0%) had cervical cancer screening done before. Most of the respondents strongly agreed that cervical cancer screening detected cervical changes before they became cancerous (55%) and if found early, they are easily curable (56.7%), and made women know if they were healthy (58.8%). Healthcare professionals should conduct health education on cervical cancer and screening on a daily basis in health facilities to improve the uptake of cervical cancer screening.