Correlation between Knowledge, Attitude, and Partner Support Towards Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid Test among Women in Denpasar City, Indonesia.

BACKGROUND

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide. Thus a high mortality rate is unavoidable. Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) is a practical and inexpensive screening test for detecting cervical cancer. We aim to show the association between knowledge, attitude, and partner support towards VIA practice in women in Denpasar, Bali.

METHODS

The study design was a cross-sectional and analytical observational study conducted at the Public Health Center Denpasar in July-August 2022. The respondents consisted of 90 child-bearing-age women who met the inclusion criteria. The questionnaire consisted of informed consent, demographic characteristics (26 questions), knowledge (20 questions), attitude (22 questions), partner support (11 questions), and practice of VIA (2 questions). The data analysis used the Chi-square test using SPSS ver26.

RESULTS

The median age of all respondents was 33 (10) years. The majority of respondents were monogamous (93.03%), had no history of miscarriage (80%), used contraception (56.07%), and the mean age of first sexual intercourse was 20.6 years. Up to 69 women (76.7%) had the VIA Test in the past five years, and 42 women (46.7%) took the test regularly every three years. There is a correlation between knowledge (p=0.001, r =0.334), attitude (p<0.001, r=0.367), and partner supports (p=0.03, r=0.197) toward practicing VIA.

CONCLUSION

The practice of VIA is influenced by the level of knowledge, attitudes, and partner support of the child-bearing-age women in Denpasar. All healthcare professionals and the environment should support and encourage women to perform VIA regularly.