ABSTRACT
Background: Cervical cancer is the third most common malignancy in women worldwide, and it remains a leading cause of cancer-related death for women in developing countries
Aim and objectives: the aim of the paper is to assess and increase the awareness toward cancer cervix, early detection and prevention of risk factors among Saudi males and females
Materials and Methods: a cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out among 740 Saudi males and females above the age of 16 years. The participants were randomly enrolled in this study
Results: the participants 446 [60.3%] females and 294 [39.7%] males were included in the study. Majority of the participants [n= 547, 73.9%] have heard about cervical cancer but most of them didn't know that it is a preventable disease [n= 359, 48.5%]. We found that; only 17.6% of the study group has heard about HPV Vaccine. It could be attributed to low level of knowledge about the virus itself, since only 19.9% of the population knew about the virus
Conclusion: there is a great need to increase the educational standards of the society and improve the information and knowledge about this important disease to reduce the number of patients as well as raising the health status of the populations