فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

Background & aim: Globally, cervical cancer mortality rates remain alarmingly high, emphasizing the significance of HPV as a cause and exacerbated by unequal access to effective prevention and treatment, a critical issue in middle-income countries.This study focused on the perception and acceptability of self-sampling for HPV among female attendees of gynaecology clinics. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 256 participants aged 25–65 years who regularly attended gynaecology clinics at a tertiary hospital in South West Nigeria in 2022. Participants were selected via simple random sampling and completed a semi-structured questionnaire on HPV self-sampling. The collected data were analysed using SPSS software version 25, including an examination of associations via Fisher's exact test and logistic regression at a significance level of 0.05. Results: The participants had an average age of 35.8 ±9.7 years and were almost all literate (98.0%). The mean perception score was 9.4±3.1 (74.2%), with approximately one quarter (25.8%) having a negative perception. The mean acceptability score was 9.2±1.7 (96.5%).   Respondents with good HPV knowledge were 5.4 times more likely to have a positive perception than those with poor knowledge (OR = 5.361, p = 0.001, CI: 2.047–14.037). Conclusion: In this study, many participants had a positive perception, and almost all had a high level of acceptability. Poor perception and inadequate education on self-sampling were related to a low level of acceptability of HPV self-sampling, indicating the need for additional infrastructure and guidelines regarding cervical cancer screening.