Cervical cancer is the most prevalent cancer among Peruvian women. The objective of this study was to identify barriers to follow-up for abnormal Pap smears among FSW in Peru. Qualitative interviews revealed that the major barrier to follow-up was lack of knowledge about HPV and potential health consequences of an abnormal Pap smear. The predominant barriers to follow-up were lack of standardization in recording and communicating results and insufficient FSW knowledge regarding health consequences of HPV infection.
Standardization of record-keeping and distribution of educational pamphlets have been implemented to improve follow-up for HPV. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Cervical cancer is increasingly preventable with the advent of screening, treatment, and vaccination against human papillomavirus HPV , a sexually transmitted infection responsible for 99 percent of cervical cancer cases worldwide [ 1 ].
Although screening programs for HPV have been present in Latin America for over 30 years, Latin American countries have not witnessed the decrease in mortality from cervical cancer seen in high-income countries [ 4 ].
A Colombian study found that increased screening coverage did not correlate with reductions in cervical cancer mortality; however, a reduction in mortality was seen in areas where a higher proportion of women sought medical advice related to an abnormal Pap smear [ 5 ].
