Health information dissemination for breast cancer awareness, early detection and support for women

Abstract

This study is to explore how information about breast cancer (BC) is disseminated to working class mothers in Lagos State. It is to investigate how information disseminated is used by the respondents to detect early this deadly disease and ascertain if they are aware of any support by organisation and the government. The Survey design was used. Two stage sampling technique was adopted. The first stage was the cluster sampling of 25% of the population by which two tertiary institutions (Lagos Sate University and Lagos State Polytechnic) in the state were selected. In the second stage, 500 respondents were selected by simple random sampling proportionate to size. 350 and 150 respondents were chosen from the two institutions. Primary data was collected using questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. Findings revealed majority of the respondents (91%) got information about BC from their offices, closely followed by reading (89%) this was confirmed from the percentage of the respondents that read about breast cancer from the print media (89). Most respondents disagree with the fact that pains in the breast is a symptoms of breast cancer (28.8%). The highest rated support the respondents are aware of was the breast cancer screening exercise (93.7%) which shows in the rating of the respondents about their awareness of breast cancer screening centres (68%). The paper concludes that early detection of breast cancer can help save life. Government and relevant organisations inclusive should regularly organise a screening exercise for other women so that women can be aware and also spread the information to those who do not have such opportunity thereby reducing the risk among women.

Keywords: Health information, awareness, breast cancer, early detection, mothers