Knowledge and Factors Influencing Late Detection of Prostate Cancer among Men Aged 45 Years and Above In Mufulira District

Abstract

This study focuses on the knowledge and factors leading to late detection of prostate cancer in males aged 45 and above, the area of focus was Mufulira district which is a town located in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia, this study exhausts all factors that are most likely to lead to late detection of prostate cancer, this is because for a long time focus has been much on cervical, breast and lung cancer (MOH report, 2015), not knowing that the most common cancer in Zambian males has been neglected. In this research, the type of study used was a cross sectional study which was both qualitative and quantitative, hence the focus was on males aged 45 and above who were purposively selected randomly to find out if they had knowledge about prostate cancer and if they had the cancer or not, in the process five age groups were examined through interviews, questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGD). The data collected was analysed with the help of the STATA software package. The results showed that there was no significant relationship between ages and prostate cancer, marital statues and prostate cancer and employment and prostate cancer, and it was observed that a majority of participants never got any cancer screening services and only 3.38% had knowledge pertaining prostate cancer out of a total sample size of 355 participants, of which the majority of 50% did their upper secondary education, 42% of the participants were aged 56-60years and 42% of the participates were aged 61-65 making them the majority out of all age group with knowledge on prostate cancer, 83% of those that had knowledge about prostate cancer were employed and 92% of participants who were married had knowledge on prostate cancer. It was observed that there was need for increase of knowledge about prostate cancer, as this will lead to population awareness, making it easy for people to get screened to prevent late detection of prostate cancer, this will help in also forming policies that are effective to prevent prostate cancer, because it will allow public health specialists to have the necessary data and tools that determines the cause of prostate cancer.