Knowledge, Practice and Acceptability of Cervical Cancer Screening among Midwives in the Gambia

Cervical cancer is one of the commonest malignancy among women in the world with an estimated 527,624 new cases and 265,653 deaths in 2012.The burden of cervical cancer in developing countries is huge with an incidence rate that exceeds the average worldwide rates of 15.3 per 100,000 women per year. Furthermore, countries like Gambia, Mali, Uganda and Zimbabwe have age incidence rate of 32.5, 37.7, 47.5 and 47.4 per 100,000 women per year respectively. The aim of the study was to assess the Knowledge, Practise and Acceptability of Cervical Cancer Screening among Midwives in public health facilities in the Gambia. A cross-sectional study design was used and a sample size of 91 female midwives was selected from 14 public health facilities using multistage sampling method. A questionnaire consisting of structured and semi-structured questions was used. The questionnaire was pilot tested among 24 midwifery students for validity and had a Cronbach score of 0.76 after deleting six questions. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20, descriptive and inferential statistics like hypothesis tested was performed. The results shows that 35.2% (n=32) had poor knowledge on cervical cancer, while 27.5% (n=25) had fair knowledge and 37.4% (n=34) had good knowledge on cervical cancer. There is no statistically significant association between length of service and knowledge on cervical cancer (P= 0.397). However, there is a statistically significant association between cadre and knowledge on cervical cancer screening as chi square test shows P= 0.006. There is knowledge deficit on cervical cancer among female midwives working in public health facilities in the Gambia. Very few midwives have been trained on visual inspection using acetic acid.