Abstract:

Background: Awareness about cervical cancer is a first step in the process of screening and early treatment, majority of the deaths occur in developing countries including Tanzania. Though knowledge on cervical cancer is an important determinant of women’s participation in early screening and prevention for cervical cancer, little is known about this topic in Tanzania. This study is aimed at providing knowledge and awareness to university women and girls in Mwanza region on the advantages of early screening.

Methodology: A cross sectional survey will be carried out among female students at SAUT. Every female student at the time of data collection was interviewed in Swahili language using a pre-tested structured questionnaire on cervical cancer knowledge and advantages of early screening.

Results: A total of 384 respondent women and girls were interviewed, 261(68%) reported to have awareness on the advantage of early screening for cervical cancer. The findings of this study revealed that 222(57.8%) women had satisfactory level of knowledge followed by 112(29.2%) women who had good knowledge and the lowest number of 50(13%) women who had poor level of knowledge towards the risk of cervical cancer disease.

Conclusion and recommendation: These results indicate that most of the student participated in my study were aware about the advantage of early screening and prevention of cervical cancer although most of them have screened so that negative attitudes and gaps in knowledge should be addressed early before suitable ages for screening and vaccination hence there must be concentrate on informing students about the risks factors for cervical cancer by carrying out awareness campaigns every semester of which should focus more emphasize on the benefit of screening and vaccination.