Barriers to Cervical Cancer Screening in Rural Kenya: Perspectives from a Provider Survey
Open accessAbstract
Although cervical cancer is highly preventable through screening, it remains the number one cause of cancer-related death in Kenyan women due to lack of funding and infrastructure for prevention programs. In 2012, Family AIDS Care and Education Services in partnership with the Kenya Ministry of Health began offering free screening at eleven rural health facilities. We sought to explore why screening coverage remains low at some sites. We examined the barriers to screening through a survey of 106 healthcare staff. The most frequently cited barriers to service delivery included staffing shortages, lack of trained staff, insufficient space, and supply issues. The patient barriers commonly perceived by the staff included inadequate knowledge, wait time, discomfort with male providers, and fear of pain with the speculum exam. Despite multilateral efforts to implement cervical cancer screening, staff face significant challenges to service provision and increased education is needed for both providers and patients.
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HPV self-sampling acceptability has not been studied in rural western Kenya, a low-resource setting with limited access to health facilities and multiple barriers to pelvic exams.
“This has not been studied in rural western Kenya, a low-resource setting with limited access to health facilities and multiple barriers to pelvic exams that could be avoided in a community based self-sampling strategy [20].”
From Perspectives of women participating in a cervical cancer screening campaign with community-based HPV self-sampling in rural western Kenya: a qualitative study (2019) · cites this paper as [20]
The Introduction describes poor access to screening services in resource-limited settings, and the Results (Perception of Patient Barriers; page unavailable) report that providers in rural western Kenya identified distance from facilities and fear of pain with the speculum exam as perceived barriers. The paper does not assess HPV self-sampling acceptability or establish that community-based self-sampling would avoid those barriers; its Discussion notes that patient barriers were reported by providers, not patients. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Oketch, S. Y., Kwena, Z., Choi, Y., Adewumi, K., Moghadassi, M., Bukusi, E. A., & Huchko, M. J. (2019) · BMC Women's Health · doi:10.1186/s12905-019-0778-2 · Cited by 77 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Rosser, J. I., Hamisi, S., Njoroge, B., & Huchko, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Kenya Medical Research Institute (KE)
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- Corresponding author
- Rosser, Joelle I.
- Venue
- Journal of Community Health
- Published
- 2015-02-13
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 756-761
- ISSN
- 0094-5145 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-3610
- PMC
- PMC8162879
- OpenAlex
- W2008753071
- Cited by
- 79
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 7 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 5.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Journal of Community Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Center for Research Resources (KL2RR024130)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Women's cancer prevention and management
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Cervical Cancer and HPV Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Global Cancer Incidence and Screening
- Keywords
- cervical cancer screening, barriers to screening, rural health facilities, health workforce shortage, provider training, patient knowledge, waiting time, speculum examination, screening coverage, Kenya
- MeSH terms
- Uterine Cervical Neoplasms, Community Health Services, Female, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Kenya, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Patient Education as Topic, Rural Population, Time Factors, Early Detection of Cancer
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