Willingness and Acceptability of Cervical Cancer Screening among Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

In Ethiopia, cervical cancer (CC) ranks the 2nd most frequent cancer; and the country has 27.19 million women at risk of developing the diseases; though only 0.6% women age 18-69 years were screened every 3 years. Nearly quarters (22.1%) of southern Ethiopia Women infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) were positive for precancerous cervical cancer. Doing regular screening can prevent the disease by around half (45%) of the cases in ages of 30s, and three quarter (75%) cases in ages of 50s and 60s. In the presence of high risk for acquiring cervical cancer among HIV patients, willingness and acceptance of the screening is low in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Thus, the current study was aimed to assess willingness and acceptability of cervical cancer screening and its determinants among women living with HIV/AIDS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A facility based cross sectional study was conducted among HIV positive women attending HIV treatment centers in Addis Ababa. The respondents were identified using systematic random sampling method. Data was collected using pretested questionnaire and were entered in to epiinfo version 3.5.1 software and exported in to statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20 statistical package for analysis. The criteria’s for entering independent variables into multivariate analysis were having p-value 0.05 or less at bivariate analysis and not co-linear. One third (34.2%) of participants knew cervical cancer and two third (62.7%) were willing for the test though only a quarter (24.8%) accepted the test. The independent variables significantly associated with acceptance of screening were educational level, source of information, awareness for the test and preventability of the disease. In current study willingness and acceptance of CC (cervical cancer) were low. Thus organizations working on cancer and HIV/AIDS