Cancer awareness and perceived barriers to health seeking in a rural population

Low cancer awareness may lead to delays in cancer screening behaviour and diagnosis.

We set out to assess public awareness of cancer and perceived barriers to seeking help among the rural population of Murewa district in a cross-sectional survey of 384 conveniently selected respondents.

A self-administered and interviewer guided questionnaires were developed with the guide of the Cancer Awareness Measure (CAM) used in public awareness studies.

Awareness of the occurrence of cancer in the population was high with 90.1% responding that they had heard about cancer. However, 60.6% of the respondents could not explain what cancer is. An association was identified between educational level and awareness on the existence of cancer in the population (p = 0.001). Age was also associated with awareness of the existence of cancer in the population (p < 0.001). Level of education was also associated with awareness on types of cancers with breast cancer (p = 0.0014), and prostate cancer (p = 0.001). Barriers to health (help) seeking included low levels of awareness of the availability of cancer screening and not being able to afford treatment services. Other barriers to help seeking included fear of screening and the costs of screening services. Unavailability of preventive and curative services for cancer at primary care level was another barrier to help seeking.

There is therefore an increasing need for health promotional interventions to raise public awareness of cancer and to create supportive environments for cancer prevention, screening, early detection and treatment.