An Economic Analysis of Awareness of Menstrual Hygiene among Adolescent Girls of Panipat District of Haryana in North India

ABSTRACT

Background: Teenage is the age where a child especially girl child needs special attention and awareness towards menstruation hygiene as they are quite immature and uneducated towards it. Girls belonging to age group of 10-19 years were studied for parameters such as age of menstruation, usage of sanitary napkins, disposal of sanitary napkins and hygiene during menstruation etc. Aims: a) To assess the awareness level about menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls in a private and government schools of Panipat. b) To identify the Socio-economic factors are affecting to adolescent girls for menstrual hygiene. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted on 140 school going adolescent girls between the age group of 10-19 years. A semi structured; pretested questionnaire was prepared for data collection. A chi-square test was used to assess the association of various factors with menstruation. Statistical significance of difference between groups was tested. A p value of <0.05 was considered as statically significant. Results: out of total 140 respondents, 64.3% admitted that menstruation age starts at 14 years, 67.2% girls responded that mother is the main source of information about menstruation. Quite strangely, 84.3% of girls believed that the blood flow during menstruation comes from bladder and only 7.9% are aware that it actually comes from uterus. A total of almost 60% were aware menstruation is physiological process but 26.8% believed that it is caused by disease. In this study only 37.2% girls used sanitary napkin for menstrual absorbent and 62.5% girls stated the top reason for not using sanitary napkin in expensive rates and not affordable. Conclusion: Low level of knowledge regarding menstruation, poor menstrual hygiene was found in our study. Education regarding menstruation reproductive health with more focus on menstrual hygiene should be the part of school curriculum.

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