Why don't Hungarian women take part in organized cervical screening?

*Annamária Pakai¹, Anikó Dér¹, Ildikó Kriszbacher², Katalin Németh², Edit Zsigmond¹, Péter Balázs³

Summary
Aim. to analyse the socio-demographic background of non-attendance of organized cervical screening among medically non-trained women in Zalaegerszeg, and to investigate its reasons.
Materials and methods. Our cross-sectional study was carried out on a sample (N=1000) selected by an age-related stratified method of sampling. The self-administered questionnaire contained 35 questions, both binary (yes/no) and semi-open ones. The questions concerned socio-demographic data, gynaecological screening examination, motivation and atmosphere of screening. Both descriptive and mathematical statistical methods were applied in the data analyses.
Results. 85.5% (N=855) of respondents had attended cytological screening at least once, but 13.8% (N=138) had never attended before. Among people who had never attended were 53.3% of women aged 15-19 years, 31.5% of those with basic educational background (8 classes), 34.8% of unmarried women, and 24.1% of the unemployed (p<0.05).
Conclusions. Hungary's government has offered organized cervical screening programmes since 2003. The functional weakness of the programme is the low rate of attendance. Based on our results, fear of cancer, invasion of the private sphere, and past experiences of uncomfortable examinations may have contributed to this effect. Nevertheless, women who attended emphasized responsibility for their own state of health.

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