Knowledge on the prevention of the cervical-uterine cancer in the adolescents

Abstract

In Cuba , as in the rest of the Western countries, the cervical-uterine cancer is in the second place of oncologic morbidity in 20-to-30 years-old women; currently it is considered a sexually transmitted infection. There are some studies revealing deficient information on the part of the teenagers as for the sexually transmitted diseases and theirs consequences. That is why, in the period from February to November 2009 we carried out a descriptive investigation with the objective of identifying the knowledge on the prevention of the cervical-uterine cancer the students of the Secondary School Manuel Sanguily, Municipality of Matanzas, have. The universe was formed by the nine grade students, and to select the sample we used a probabilistic sampling by mono-stage conglomerates. A questionnaire was applied and the results indicated that the males began their first sexual relationships to the 13 years and the females to the ages of 13 and 14 years, representing 57,1 % and 50 %, respectively. Only 12, 7 % of the teenagers identified the human papilloma virus as a risk factor in the genesis of the cervical-uterine cancer. The low level of knowledge for the prevention of this kind of cancer prevailed in 92,7 % of the sample. We concluded that in the group of teenagers we studied, the most frequent fact was that they began early having sexual relationships, both boys and girls, although the last ones represented only 10 %. We identified ignorance on the human papilloma virus and poor knowledge about how to prevent it as the casual agent of this morbidity.