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.
