Cervical cancer is a type of cancer that starts in the cervix which is a cylinder that connects the lower part of a woman’s uterus to her vagina. The study investigated the awareness and utilization of cervical cancer screening services among primary health care workers in Ilesa, Osun state. The study adopted the descriptive cross-sectional research design. The sample size was determined by Taro Yamane, which was 192. Proportionate random sampling technique was used to select female primary healthcare workers. The instrument for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire which was divided into three sections. The instrument was subjected to face and content validity. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient for the constructs ranged from 0.72 to 0.85. The descriptive statistics was employed to answer the research questions, while Pearson correlation and chi-square analysis were employed to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed that level of awareness and utilisation of cervical cancer screening services was moderate. There was significant relationship between the level of awareness and utilization of cervical screening services among primary health workers (r = .272, p = .000<0.05). Only age (x2 = 25.533, p = .003 < 0.05) and ethnicity (x2 = 18.520, p = .005 < 0.05) were related to level of awareness of cervical screening services while age (x2 = 28.549, p = .000 < 0.05), marital status (x2 = 9.077, p = .011< 0.05), monthly income (x2 = 19.347, p = .000 < 0.05) and educational qualifications (x2 = 51.004, p = .000 < 0.05) were related to level of utilisation of cervical screening services among primary health workers. It was recommended among others that there is need to establish cervical cancer screening education programmes among health care professionals at all levels, especially among nurses.
Keywords: Health Care Workers, Screening, Utilization, awareness, cervical cancer
