Practice on Personal Hygiene Maintenance during Menstruation Cycle among School Girls in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Abstract

Introduction: Menstruation is the normal and regular process for every woman. It can affect both physical and mental status of the women. The main thing of menstrual period is personal hygiene maintenance. Improper management of personal hygiene maintains can causes infectious disease and causes severe gynecological problems. In Bangladesh, most of the adolescent girls cannot ask any question about their physiological changes to their mother or relative because of their shyness and social stigma. Good hygiene management during menstruation can increase personal confidence, while inadequate management can lead to mentally depression and also hamper in their daily activities. This study was aimed to assess the practice on personal hygiene maintenance during menstruation period among school girls in selected schools of Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Methods: A cross-sectional and descriptive type of study was carried out in three randomly selected schools in Dhaka city of Bangladesh with 384 systematic randomly selected adolescent girls. The data were collected from the respondents using semi-structured questionnaire by face-to-face interview, after taking verbal consent form the participants and written consent from their parents and school authority. Data entry and analysis were done by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) statistical software version 20 for the analysis. The anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents were maintained strictly and study participants were informed that they can be able to leave the study at any stage of data collection. Findings: The finding reported that nearly 80% (79%) of the respondent use sanitary napkin and among the non-users, 95.2 percent (77) use piece of cloths. The majority (66%) of the respondents change napkin/other materials after 4 hours and 90% take genital care regularly. Almost all (99.5%) the respondents take bath regularly and 99.5 percent wash their hand with soap and water. About 98 percent used to wear clean dresses and 94.5 percent normally take healthy food. Using sanitary napkin was found to be associated with age, parent’s income whereas it was not associated with mother’s educational level. Conclusion: Awareness regarding the need for information about good menstrual practices is very important and should be given to enhance the good level of knowledge and practices. Mass media should also emphasize on health information about menstrual hygiene. Therefore, policy makers and stakeholders should take necessary initiatives to setup health education program to create awareness and practice of good menstrual hygiene among the adolescents. Keywords: Menstrual Hygiene; School Girls; Practice; Dhaka