Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women worldwide, and India accounts for one third of global cervical cancer deaths. (However, reduction of mortality/morbidity is due to cervical cancer’s early detection and treatment of cervical precancerous lesions.) Though youth are the prime candidates for prophylactic HPV vaccination, several studies have shown that they had very little knowledge about HPV vaccination. We could not find any documented study in Manipur regarding knowledge on cervical cancer and HPV infection. Hence this study was undertaken to determine the knowledge on cervical cancer, HPV infections, HPV vaccine among the college students and to assess their attitude towards vaccination and to determine the association between knowledge on cervical cancer and HPV infection with selected socio-demographic variables such as age, sex, etc. Methods: Cross-sectional study. Setting: colleges providing graduates between 12th Jan16th Feb 2015. Sixteen colleges were selected using convenience sampling from three districts of Manipur. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection among 1059 college students. Health talks were given after collecting baseline data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean (SD) and percentages. Chi square test and t-test were used for analysis. P-value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Mean age of the respondent was 20.21 ± 1.71. Only 41, 15 and 12% of the respondents have heard of cancer cervix, HPV infection and HPV vaccine respectively. One-third of the respondents have no knowledge about risk factors and preventive measures against cancer cervix. Majority of the respondents (96.7%) wanted to have HPV vaccination. However, one-fourth of them still have the opinion that it is safe to have multiple sexual partners after vaccination (P-value <0.03). Female had higher mean knowledge score of cancer cervix as compared to male (P value <0.04). Conclusions: Cervical cancer and HPV awareness among college students was found inadequate. Health education will be needed to maximize awareness among students for cervical cancer prevention
