Cervical cancer prevention: perceptions of women attending Knysna primary health care clinics

ENGLISH SUMMARY : Background: Cervix cancer is the cancer with the highest prevalence and mortality in Africa. The current screening method is by pap-smear, but other methods of screening and primary prevention against human papillomavirus (HPV) by immunization are currently being investigated. The aim of this study was to explore the experience, knowledge, attitude and beliefs of the clinic attending women attending clinics in the Knysna sub-district regarding the current cervical screening programme and to obtain their opinion on the possible alternatives methods available. Method: A prospective quantitative and qualitative study was conducted in six primary health care clinics in the Knysna sub-district. Data was collected from 206 completed questionnaires, by sequentially selected women aged 20-65 years. Six focus group discussions were held. Descriptive results were presented as means for continuous/ordinal data, and percentages for categorical data. The Chi-square test was used to test for relationships, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare groups’ mean values and Spearman correlations for comparison between ordinal variables. A 5% significance level (p