Resources / Menstrual Hygiene: Knowledge and Practice among Adolescent School Girls of Saoner, Nagpur District

Summary

A community based, cross sectional study was conducted in January- March, 2011 on 387 adolescent school girls in among  going girls in the field practice area of the Rural Health Unit and Training Centre, Saoner, in the Nagpur district.

Only 36.95% of the girls were aware of menstruation before menarche. The major source of information about
menstruation for them was found to be their mothers. More than three fourth of the girls in the study were not aware of the cause and the source of the bleeding. A majority of them had knowledge about the use of sanitary pads. The mean age of menarche in the study subjects was 12.85 ± 0.867 years; sanitary pads were used by 49.35% of the selected girls. The practice of the use of old clothes was reported in 45.74% of the subjects. Satisfactory cleaning of the external genitalia was practised by 33.85% of the girls. Three fourth of the study girls practised various restrictions
during menstruation. Some menstrual hygiene indices have shown a significant difference in the rural and urban girls.

Conclusion: A variety of factors are known to affect menstrual behaviours, the most influential being economic status and residential status (urban and rural). Awareness regarding the need for information about healthy menstrual practices is very important. It is essential to design a mechanism to address and for the access of healthy menstrual knowledge.