Abstract:
Background: Cervical cancer is a major public health problem. In the world, cervical cancer is the fourth most
common cancer among women and it is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality in females. It is the second
most common women cancer in Ethiopia with almost 6300 new cases and 4884 deaths annually. Despite the high
burden of new cases and deaths, there is a scarcity of data on knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) towards
cervical cancer screening among female university students in Ethiopia particularly in the study area. Therefore, the
present study was aimed to assess the KAP of undergraduate female students towards cervical cancer screening.
Methods: An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted in April 2018 at the University of Gondar,
College of Medicine and Health Sciences undergraduate female students. Pretested, self-administered questionnaire
was used for data collection. Four hundred and three female students were recruited by a simple random sampling
method and the data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical packages. Descriptive data
analysis was used to report the results.
Results: More than half of the respondents (59.3.3%) had good knowledge, whereas nearly 67.7% of the
respondents had favorable attitude towards cervical cancer. However, less than 1% of the respondents had been
screened for cervical cancer.
Conclusion: Although undergraduate female students had apparently good knowledge and favorable attitude,
their practices on cervical cancer screening were quite low. Therefore, the health sectors and the gender streaming
office of the university mobilize students to strengthen the uptake the cervical cancer screening practice.
