Abstract:

Background: Breast self -examination is a kind of examination which is cost effective, painless, easy to apply, safe, and non-invasive procedures without special material or tool requirements involving checking your breasts for lumps or changes. It is an important noticing way of breast tumors which takes five minutes to apply. Breast malignant tumor is a disease of premenopausal women as a whole, but it’s also affecting younger ages due to underlying risk factors of lifestyle changes .It is still prevalent in sub-Saharan African countries including Tanzania. Breast tumors are associated with high economic, mortality and morbidity burden. Awareness and self-exams is the starting point to identifying breast tumor and potentially saving lives.

Aim: The study determined the knowledge, attitude and the practice of breast self-examination as a risk reduction strategy towards breast tumors among female university students at CUHAS.

Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at CUHAS. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The obtained data was analyzed using SPSS version 20 for report writing. It was conducted from September 2021 to January 2022 with an estimated budget of Tsh. 600,000/=.

Results: A total of 268 participants volunteered but only 232 were recruited. The range was between 19 to 30 years. A majority of 72.4% of the respondents perceived BSE as an important technique in early detection of breast cancer. 49.6% had ever performed a BSE, 13 % performed it regularly, 43.5% knew the correct monthly timing.

Conclusion: There is a chance that most of young women in the country are practicing BSE inadequately. There is a need for widespread BSE campaigns in the community and educational institutes emphasizing the correct techniqueand a need to evaluate BSE efficacy.