Health seeking behavior and its determinants for cervical cancer among women of childbearing age in Hossana Town, Hadiya zone, Southern Ethiopia: community based cross sectional study

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer is one of the most easily preventable forms of female cancers if early screening and diagnosis is made. Low awareness level about the disease and risk factors, beliefs about the disease, poor access to preventive services, affordability of the service and current health service system can influence decision to seek health care services for cervical cancer. The objective of this study was to determine health seeking behaviour and determinant factors for cervical cancer in Hossana town. METHODS: Our study was carried out in Hossana town using community based cross-sectional study design. The study population was women of childbearing age (15–49 years) who had the chance of being randomly selected from the source population. Five hundred ninety five women of childbearing age were included in the study. Systematic random sampling technique was employed to select the study units. Structured and pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data. The collected data were cleaned and entered by EPI info version 3.5.4 and analysed by SPSS version 16. We considered P-value < 0.05 to decide statistically significant association between the independent and dependent variables. RESULTS: The prevalence of health seeking behaviour for cervical cancer among the study participants was only 14.2%. Respondents’ poor knowledge [AOR: 7.25, 95% CI: (1.87, 28.08)], not ever received information [AOR: 52.03, 95% CI: (13.77, 196.52)] and not actively searching information about cervical cancer [AOR: 14.23, (95%CI: (3.49, 57.95)] were significantly associated factors with not seeking health for prevention and control of cervical cancer. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of health seeking behaviour for cervical cancer is low. Respondent’ poor knowledge, not ever received information, and not actively searching information about cervical cancer are significantly associated with not seeking health for cervical cancer prevention and control. This study stressed the importance of increasing knowledge, promoting active search of health information and experiences of receiving information from different sources regarding health seeking behaviour. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-018-4203-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.