Knowledge, attitude and practices regarding cervical cancer and screening among women visiting primary health care in Qatar

There are no data on the knowledge, attitude and practices of Qatari women about this cancer. Therefore this cross-sectional interview-based study was conducted in 2008 among 500 women at 5 randomly selected primary health care centres in Qatar to determine their knowledge, attitude and practices regarding cervical cancer and screening. Just over 85% had heard of cervical cancer and 76% had heard about the Pap smear. Knowledge of cervical cancer was significantly greater among women aged 30-49 years, and those employed, married for > 15 years, with a university degree, or who had had 4 births or 3 miscarriages. Almost 40% had had a Pap smear test at least once and 85.5% of the rest would have a test if they were told that the procedure was painless and simple. Over half wanted the test to be done in the well-woman clinic at the primary health care centre. Knowledge and practice was inadequate among those under 30 years old, those recently married and those with a lower education level

Knowledge, attitudes and practice of general practitioners towards complementary and alternative medicine in Doha, Qatar

A cross-sectional study of knowledge, attitudes and practice of general practitioners [GPs] towards complementary and alternative medicine [CAM] was conducted in Doha, Qatar. Out of 119 respondents, 39.1% reported poor knowledge about CAM. Self-reported knowledge was highest for counselling and psychotherapy [69.0%], diet and supplements [68.1%], acupuncture [45.2%], herbal medicine [47.3%] and massage [42.5%]. While 83.8% described their attitude to CAM as welcoming and 97.5% were interested to learn more about it, fewer [30.1%] had practised it before, referred patients [24.8%] or asked patients' about their use of CAM [34.8%]. Their own lack of knowledge and training in CAM was seen as a barrier to its use by 60.0% of the GPs