Breast examination practices of women at Ho in the Volta Region of Ghana

Abstract

The study was conducted to find out whether women at Ho, in the Volta Region of Ghana have been engaging in breast examination practices for early detection of breast abnormality and also to find out about factors that would influence the women to examine their breasts. The study was a descriptive survey. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 1,259 women. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were used to analyse the data. The result exhibited that about 57% (n = 715) of the sampled women at Ho had low level of knowledge of breast cancer. Also, 88% (n = 1,109) of the women had low level of awareness of breast examination practices. Extent of practice of Breast Self-Examination (BSE), Clinical Breast Examination (CBE) or mammography was equally low as 71% (n = 900) of the respondents did not engaged in examination of their breasts. Advice by nurse/doctors [OR = 7.20, 95% CI = 5.11-10.13, p = .000], primary education [OR = 2.51, 95% CI = 1.16-5.42, p = .019], breast health education at health care facilities [OR = 2.47, 95% CI = 1.75-3.51, p =.000]., short distance to breast examination centres [OR = 2.11, 95% CI = 1.28-3.41, p = .003], fear of having breast cancer [OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.37-.0.72, p = .000] and shyness of breast being touched by another person [OR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.29-0.66, p = .000] were respectively found to be strong significant influencing factors for practice of BSE, CBE and mammography. The study established that most women at Ho have not been examining their breasts. Stakeholders in breast health issues should therefore develop pragmatic strategies to execute the strong significant influencing factors identified in this study to motivate women at Ho to regularly engage in breast examination practices.