What’s Stopping Malaysian Women from Uptaking HPV Screening and Vaccines?: A Study on Barriers

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-61-9_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cervical Cancer; HPV; Women; Knowledge; Vaccination; Screening

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in Malaysia where HPV16 and HPV18 genotypes are more prevalent among 88.7% of women. It is preventable if the pre-cancerous cells were identified early via Pap smear, HPV DNA or Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) test. Prophylactic HPV vaccines were proven effective in clinical trials, also acting as a viable prevention strategy. However, the uptake rates of vaccination and screening remain unclear makes it difficult to understand the coverage levels and barriers. The screening tests are essential for every woman and it requires high motivation to uptake it. Somehow, it is important to identify and address the potential barriers that affect their motivation level. This study had conducted a pilot study, gathering respondents’ feedbacks on existing barriers and other issues they face, preventing them from uptaking HPV screening and vaccination. The findings revealed that respondents (n = 32) avoided undergoing screening tests and (n = 28) of them failed to complete the vaccination. Furthermore, their knowledge level were also tested and low awareness level were found as 60% (n = 24) of them misunderstood that HPV spreads through blood and other bodily fluids, 80% (n = 32) never knew that sexually active ones must undergo screening test and 57.5% (n = 23) misunderstood that HPV infection will show noticeable symptoms. This study had also proved that there is lack of awareness among women and 47.5% of them worried about the accuracy of screening results. Hence, the future work will be focused entirely on identifying the relationship between proposed variables and women’s intention to uptake preventive measures against cervical cancer.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Palpunavam Prisha
AU  - Khong Tan Sin
AU  - Chin Lee Poo
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/26
TI  - What’s Stopping Malaysian Women from Uptaking HPV Screening and Vaccines?: A Study on Barriers
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication, Language, Education and Social Sciences (CLESS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 22
EP  - 31
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-61-9_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-61-9_4
ID  - Prisha2022
ER  -