The Knowledge & Practice of Menstrual Hygiene among Adolescent Girls iI One of the Municipal Corporation Schools of Ahmednagar
Keywords:
Menstrual hygiene, Adolescent girls, Knowledge, PracticeAbstract
Aim: to find out knowledge and practice of menstrual hygiene in school going girls. Objectives: 1) assessing the level of knowledge regarding menstrual hygiene among school going girls. 2) to find out the status of menstrual hygiene being practiced by the school going girls. Material & Methods: a community based cross sectional study on adolescent girls carried at municipal corporation school, Ahmednagar. A pretested semi structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The demographic information including family details, parents education, occupation, housing conditions, house type, toilet facility and water supply in the toilet were enquired and then documented. All girls present on the day of school visits were included i.e. 140 out of 178 (80%) coverage). The girls absent on the day of visit were interviewed in the next class visit. The data analysis was done using SPSS 15 software. Results: it was evident that the mean age of girls was 13 years and the range was between 11 to 16 years. It was evident that only 87 (62.14%) girls were aware about menstruation before menarche. A majority of girls (70.71%) were not aware of the source of the menstrual bleeding. The study showed that 44 (31.42%) girls used sanitary pads during menstruation, 90 (64.28%) girls used cloth pieces and 6 (4.28%) girls used both sanitary pad & cloth. The cleaning of external genitalia was satisfactory in 97% of girls and only 3% girls showed unsatisfactory results. Conclusion: It can be said that among the adolescent school girls, the knowledge on menstruation is poor and the practice are often not optimal for proper hygiene. Menstrual hygiene as an issue needs to be addressed at all levels. It is essential to design a mechanism to address and for the access of healthy menstrual practices.
Downloads
References
Adhikari P et al (2007) Knowledge and practice regarding menstrual hygiene in rural adolescent girls of Nepal, KUMJ, pp 382 386, Vol 5, No 3, Lssue 19.
Dasgupta A and Sarkar M (2008) Menstrual hygiene: How hygienic is the adolescent girl in IJCM, pp77-80, Vol33(2).
EI- Gilany A Badawi K and EI – Fedawy S (2005) Menstrual hygiene among adolescent schoolgirls in Mansoura, Egypt in Reproductive Health Matters, pp- 147-152, Vol. 13(26).
Salem R and Shetty V (2006) Key facts about the menstrual cycle, INFO Reports No 7 Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, The INFO Project.
Ten V TA (2007) Menstrual hygiene: A neglected condition for the achievement of several millennium development goals, Europe External Policy Advisors.
Dhingra R, Kumar A. Knowledge and practices related to menstruation among tribal (Gujjar) adolescent girls. Etho- Med2009;3(1): 43-48.
Singh AJ. The place of menstruation in the reproductive lives of women of rural north India. Indian Journal of Community Medicine 2006;31(1): 10-14.
Ahuja A, Tiwari S. Awareness about pubertal changes among adolescent girls. Journal of Family Welfare 1995;41(1) : 46-50.
Das PK. The reproductive health of married adolescents in rural Maharashtra: A report of a state level workshop on building evidence from program and research which was held at Pune; 4-5 January 2008.
Mitra RS, Roy S, Ghosh A, Das BM. The menstrual characteristics: A study of adolesscents of rural and urban West Bengal, India. Ann Human Boil 2010;37(5): 668-81.
Subhash B. Thakare, Sushma S. Thakare, Monica Reddy, Nidhi Rathi, Ketaki Pathak, suresh Ughad: Menstrual Hygiene: Knowledge and Practice among Adolescent School Girls of Saoner, Nagpur; Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. 2011 October, Vol-5(5): 1027-1033.
Ghattargi CH, Deo DS. Preparation and Practices regarding Menstruation: A comparative study in Rural and Urban Adolescent Girls. Indian Journalof Community Medicine 2005;30(1): 10-14.
Water Aid: Is Menstrual Hygiene and Management as issue for Adolescent Girls? Water Aid South Asia Publication ; 2009.
Narayan KA, Shrivastava, DK, Pelto PJ,Veerapmmal S. Puberty rituals reproductive and health of adolescent school girls of south India. Asia Pacific Population Journal June, 2001;16:225-38.
Mudey AB, Keshwani N, Mudey GA, Goyal RC. A cross-sedtional study on the awareness regarding safe and hygienic practices amongst school going adolescent girls in the rural areas of Wardha district. Global Journal of Health Science 2010;2(2): 225-231.
Omidwar S, Begum K. Factors which influence the hygienic practices during menses among girls from south India: A cross sectional study. International Journal of Collaborative Research on Internal Medicine and Public Health 2010;2:411 -423.
Nemade I, Anjenaya S, Gujar R. Impact of health education on the knowledge and practices about menstruation among the adolescent girls of Kalamboli , Navi Mumbai. Health and Population: Perspective Issues 2009;32(4) : 67-75.
Khanna A, Goyal RS, Bhawsar R. Menstrual practices and reproductive problems: A study of adolescent girls in Rajasthan. Journal of Health Management 2005;7(1): 91-97.
Quazi SZ, Gaidhane A., Singh D. Beliefs s and practices regarding menstruation among the adolescent girls of high schools and junior colleges of the rural areas of Thane district. Journal of DMIMSU 2006.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
