Assessing the Knowledge of Breast Cancer and its Treatment Among Female Undergraduate Students in the Faculty of Science in a Tertiary Education Institution in Nigeria

Abstract

A cross-sectional study carried out to determine the knowledge of breast cancer and its treatment among female undergraduate  students in the faculty of science at Gombe State University. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all 260 respondents  who were in the facultyofscience Gombe State University. More than half of the respondents were aged 21-25 (59.2%), most of them were  single (61.2%) and 70.4% of respondents reported having no familyhistoryof breast cancer and 38.1% were in 200 level. More than  two-thirds of the respondents (85.0%)showed a poor understanding of the major risk factors and early warning signs of breast cancerbut  the result reported that the majority of the respondents are aware of the existence of thedisease. Chi-square test detected a statistically  significant association between academic level (p-value= 0.01<0.05), and family history (p-value= 0.04<0.05) with the knowledge of breast  cancerand treatment. The findings show that there is inadequate knowledge of breast cancer diseaseamong female undergraduate  students in Gombe State University targeted education measuresshould be employed to improve the early detection of breast cancer.