HPV VACCINE VOICES: UNDERSTANDING THE KNOWLEDGE ATTITUTE AND PRACTICE TOWARDS THE HPV VACCINATION

BACKGROUND: Although the reach of health education programmes through social media has been increased, the HPV vaccination status is still low in our country. The criteria of age limit for HPV vaccination has been reduced, and the new type of vaccine has been made available, yet the attitude and practice are observed to be poor. Hence, we conducted the present study to analyze the incidence of vaccination, the knowledge gap, and the attitude towards HPV vaccination in India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study conducted by including 1000 study population of either gender, aged more than 18 years and willing to be the part of study. RESULTS: Most of the study population in our study were from South India. Females and individuals aged 41 and above had significantly better knowledge about the HPV vaccine. Those who had attended scientific sessions about vaccines had significantly accurate knowledge than others. Though 76.9% of the overall population knew about the availability of the vaccine, only 4.8% of them were immunized against HPV. The major barrier to getting the vaccine was that they were not sure which vaccine to take. CONCLUSION: Frequent health education programmes about HPV infection, the cancer prevalence, available vaccination, and the government policies to provide it free of cost would help increase the vaccination rate.