Acceptability of vaccination against human papillomavirus in health students

Abstract

Introduction: Human Papillomavirus infection is a vaccine-preventable disease whose prevalence continues to be quite high in young women in low-income countries. Objective: To determine the association of knowledge, attitude and sociodemographic factors with the acceptability of vaccination against Human Papillomavirus in human medicine students. Methods: A quantitative, observational, analytical and cross-sectional study was performed with a sample of 371 human medicine students from a Peruvian university during the period November 2020 to January 2021. The sampling was probabilistic. Results: Of the 371 respondents, 84.9% stated that they were accepting of vaccination against the Human Papillomavirus. In the multivariate analysis, it was observed that attitude (OR: 2.86; CI: 1.99 - 4.11), gender (OR: 1.17; CI: 1.05 - 1.31), age (OR: 0.88, CI: 1.78 -0.98) were statistically significant. Regarding knowledge, no significant difference was found with the acceptability of vaccination against Human Papillomavirus (OR: 1.03; CI: 0.93-1.13). Conclusion: An association was found between attitude, female gender and age over 20 years. No association was found between knowledge about the Human Papillomavirus and the acceptability of vaccination.

Keywords

• conocimiento
• actitud
• infección por papilomavirus humano
• vacunación
• estudiantes de medicina.