Background: Prostate Cancer is the commonest cancer among the males in Nigeria. It manifests late and also has a very high mortality rate. There is need to plan programmes that will enhance the screening behaviour of the males. This study examined the knowledge, attitude and screening behaviour of secondary school teachers in Ibadan North Local Government area (LGA).
Method: Using a multistage sampling, 200 male teachers were selected from nineteen different secondary schools in Ibadan North Local Government Area. The Instrument used for data collection was Prostrate Cancer Knowledge, Attitude and Behaviour scale, which is made up of five subscales with reliability coefficient of 0.77. Of the 200 questionnaires 186 were retrieved and analysed, by descriptive statistics and Pearson product moment correlation as appropriate.
Result: The teachers were within the age range of 21-60 years, with a mean age of 38 years; 136 (73.1%) were married while 50 (26.9%) were single. The educational level of the participants ranged from senior secondary school certificate to masters degree. Some 79.0% have heard about prostate cancer, 7 1.0% know about prostate cancer screening, 56.6% of the respondents reported that they do not know where to go for prostate cancer screening; 35.5 % have had any sort prostate cancer screening and among the 18.3% that had the specific marker antigen screening only 16.1% went back to collect the result. Of those, 91.4% did not go back to collect result because of fear of the diagnosis. A positive linear relationship was found between respondent’s prostate cancer related knowledge and perceived benefit of screening for prostate cancer and prostate cancer screening behaviour (p<0.05).
Conclusion: It is recommended that prostate cancer related public health enlightenment should be organized for the public, especially for the males and their spouses in order to enable them make informed decisions about going for prostate cancer screening.