Attitude and practice on human papilloma virus infection and vaccination among students from secondary occupational health school: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Cervical cancer (CC) is reported as the second-most common female cancer worldwide, of which 99% is caused by persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. HPV vaccine protects against HPV infection and most cases of CC, which has only been introduced for a short time in mainland China. This study aimed to evaluate the attitude and practice related to HPV infection and vaccination among students at secondary occupational health school (SOHS) in China. We conducted a cross-sectional study in Southern China where data of 2248 participants were collected through questionnaires to estimate attitude and practice of students. Only 4.1% believed they were easily infected by HPV, 38.2% were willing to receive HPV vaccine and 30.8% intended to do regular screening of HPV infection in the future. Students in the second grade (OR = 1.51, 95%CI [1.25, 1.81]) and third grade (OR = 3.99, 95%CI [2.53, 6.27]) were more willing to take HPV vaccine compared to students in the first grade. Among the non-vaccinated participants, the most frequent reason for not receiving HPV vaccine was insufficient knowledge about HPV (91.1%). Characteristics of higher grade, personal education before enrollment and academic performance, medical specialty, history of sex experience and HPV vaccine and family history of other cancers were associated with higher attitude scores (p < .05). Considering the increasing prevalence of HPV infection and the need of improvement in attitude and practice toward HPV, more education about HPV infection and vaccination should be incorporated into school curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Cervical cancer (CC)
• human papilloma virus (HPV) infection
• vaccination
• attitude and practice
• secondary occupational health school (SOHS)
• cross-sectional study

Abbreviations

HPV	=	Human Papillomavirus
CC	=	Cervical Cancer
SOHS	=	Secondary Occupational Health School
OR	=	Odd Ratio
95% CI	=	95% Confidence Interval
RMB	=	Renminbi (Chinese currency)

Acknowledgments

We thank all the students for taking part in this study.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval to perform the survey was granted by the Ethical Review Committee of Shantou University Medical College (SUMC-2019-62). In addition, a consent form was obtained to further guarantee their voluntary participation in our present study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by 2020 Li Ka Shing Foundation Cross-Disciplinary Research Grant [grant numbers:2020LKSFG04A] and the special fund for science and technology of Guangdong Province.