Spatial Analysis of Cervical Cancer and Correlated Factors

Abstract

Cervical cancer is a screen preventable disease, despite this fact majority of women in Uganda report to major health centers at advanced stage of the disease leasing high mortality of the disease. The applicability and use of GIS in epidemiology studies in Uganda is still lacking, GIS combined with methods of spatial statistics provide powerful new tools for understanding the epidemiology of diseases thus analysis currently being done lack the spatial component, to effectively enable making informed spatial knowledge into areas at risk where screening services should target the gap which results from screening. This study was aimed exploring GIS to analyze the spatial distribution of cervical cancer and the correlated factors to target the high risk areas in Uganda. This involved determining the distribution of cervical cancer, developing a factor hotspot map and determine its relationship to the distribution and exploring the relationship that the correlated factors relate to the distribution of cervical cancer. This study concluded that cervical cancer is at a very high risk in Uganda and immediate action need to be considered to target the high risk areas before a wide scale infection is realized where a large majority of women are at risk of developing cervical cancer.