Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice of Testicular Selfexamination among Male University Students from Bangladesh, Madagascar, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey

The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice of testicular self-examination(TSE) among male university students from low income (Bangladesh, Madagascar), middle income (South Africa,Turkey) and emerging economy (Singapore) countries. Using anonymous questionnaires, data were collectedfrom 2,061 male undergraduate university students aged 16-30 (mean age 21.4, SD=2.4) from 5 universities in 5countries across Asia and Africa. Overall, 17.6% of the male students indicated that they knew how to performTSE; this knowledge proportion was above 20% in Bangladesh and Singapore, while it was the lowest (12.2%)in Madagascar. Among all men, 86.4% had never practiced TSE in the past 12 months, 7.1% 1-2 times, 3.5%3-10 times, and monthly TSE was 3.1%. The proportion of past 12 month TSE was the highest (17.6%) amongmale university students in South Africa and the lowest (7.3%) among students in Singapore. Logistic regressionfound that TSE importance or positive attitude was highly associated with TSE practice. TSE practices werefound to be inadequate and efforts should be made to develop programmes that can increase knowledge relatedto testicular cancer as well as the practice of testicular self-examination.