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If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. High awareness of cervical cancer CC risk factors is important to decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with CC. This study aimed to assess the knowledge level of Palestinian women about CC risk factors and to determine the factors associated with good knowledge.
This was a national cross-sectional study. Adult women from hospitals, primary healthcare centers, and public spaces of 11 governorates in Palestine were recruited using a stratified convenience sampling. For each correctly identified risk factor, the participant was given one point. The total score was calculated and was categorized into three categories: poor knowledge 0—3 , fair knowledge 4—7 , and good knowledge 8— Participants recruited from the Gaza Strip were younger, getting lower monthly incomes, and with less chronic diseases than participants recruited from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Only women Women living in the Gaza Strip were more likely than women living in the West Bank and Jerusalem to have good knowledge Conversely, knowing someone with cancer was associated with higher likelihood of having good knowledge. The overall awareness of CC risk factors was low. Cervical cancer CC is the most commonly diagnosed gynecological cancer and one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide [ 1 , 2 ]. Globally, over , new cases and , deaths were estimated for CC in [ 1 ].
Half of these deaths occurred in countries of low and medium human development indices [ 1 ]. In Palestine, a lower-middle-income country, CC is the third most common gynecological cancer with an age-standardized incidence rate of 2. CC in Palestine has a higher age-standardized mortality rate than other countries in the region [ 5 ].
