Awareness of cervical cancer, human papillomavirus vaccination, and cervical cancer screening among syrian women: a cross-sectional study

Cervical cancer, despite being highly preventable, remains a major public health concern, particularly in low-resource settings such as Syria. Due to limited national data, we aimed to evaluate the awareness of Syrian women regarding cervical cancer and its prevention strategies, as well as their practice of these methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among Syrian women aged 16 years or older residing in Damascus and Rif Dimashq, using an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire adapted from the CCKP-64 instrument and distributed online from 1 December 2025 to 1 March 2026 via social media platforms using a snowball sampling technique. Data analysis was performed with IBM SPSS Statistics v25. Data were collected from 405 Syrian women. A knowledge-to-action gap was observed. Despite most participants recognizing that cervical cancer can be linked to an infection (86.2%) and moderate familiarity with Pap smear (59.8%), actual screening rates were low, with only 6.9% ever screened. HPV vaccine awareness was limited (35.1%), with an even smaller proportion vaccinated (3%), and only 11.6% correctly identified the optimal age range for vaccination as 9 to 13 years. Notably, only a small proportion of participants (9.1%) had direct contact with affected individuals, and 31.9% thought the disease could affect them in the future. Knowledge of risk factors was moderate (mean score: 49.16 ± 8.14 out of 85), yet misconceptions persisted regarding non-established risk factors. The multivariate analysis showed that parental healthcare employment and age groups older than 16–19 years independently predicted higher knowledge of risk factors ( p < 0.05). High cervical cancer awareness among Syrian women did not translate into preventive action, confirming that knowledge alone is insufficient; therefore, integrating HPV vaccination into the national immunisation program alongside targeted educational efforts is crucially needed.