Cross-Sectional Study of HPV Self-Sampling among Indian Women-A Way Forward

Molecular human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA is a recommended test for any country planning cervical cancer screening as a national policy. The emerging literature proposes HPV self-sampling (HPV-SS) as a feasible implementing strategy in low-income settings. The success of this strategy would depend on developing impactful health education materials, understanding modalities toward generating awareness, and precision in performing the screening test among beneficiaries. The current paper is an interim analysis of ongoing research undertaken to understand the acceptability of HPV-SS among Indian women across different community settings. The study design has two modalities for generating awareness: (1) health education arm wherein the awareness and steps of collecting self-sample are explained by health personnel, and (2) the pamphlet arm wherein pictorial illustrations depicting the steps to conduct HPV-SS are distributed among women. The quality of samples is compared with primary health worker samples (PHW-S). Initial results of this study support the acceptance of HPV-SS (97%) among urban slum settings. An agreement between HPV-SS and PHW-S was demonstrated to be 95.1%. The results of the pamphlet arm were comparable to the health education arm in every aspect. The art-based strategy seems like a promising communication modality for generating awareness toward cervical cancer screening using HPV-SS in low-resource settings.