A Fight against Breast Cancer in Cameroon: Cross-Views of the Knowledge of the Female Population of Douala Hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: Breast cancer in women is a global scourge due to its frequency and high fatality rate. If screening has made it possible to considerably reduce its incidence and its mortality in developed countries, in our developing countries, it remains frequent with a still high mortality due to ignorance, late and non-systematized screening. Research Question: Can female health caregivers be incorporated into a breast cancer screening awareness team? Objective: It aimed at evaluating the knowledge of female health caregivers in Douala hospitals, added to that of female users on breast cancer screening for their efficient operationalization in this procedure. Methodology: This was a comparative cross-sectional study for analytical purposes for a period of 07 months from January 15 to July 15, 2020 conducted by means of a structured and pre-tested questionnaire after informed consent obtained from the participants received in the consultation units of these hospitals. The study variables were socio-demographic and cognitive. The data collected were entered and analyzed using SPSS 23.0 software (statistical package for social sciences) with a significance level established for a value of p Results: We retained 1000 women fulfilling our inclusion criteria, including 818 users and 182 health caregivers, i.e. an average ratio of 4 users for 1 caregiver. The average age of the users was 31.03 ± 11.31 years and that of the caregiver was 29.54 ± 8.14 years (with extremes of 15 and 67 years identical in the two groups) with a respective median of 29 and 28 years old. Good knowledge was significantly associated with level of education (secondary OR = 0.38, p = 0.03 and University OR = 0.22, p = 0.001) with a predominance of good knowledge among care givers (83.5%) against 56.2% among users. The association between caregiver and good knowledge appeared to be statistically significant (OR = 0.25; p - 5.97) p Conclusion: At the end of our study, it appeared that female health caregivers had good knowledge and could therefore be enrolled in breast cancer screening awareness strategies.