Knowledge and menstrual hygiene practice among adolescent school\xa0girls in southern Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

Zelalem Belayneh,Birhanie Mekuriaw

doi:10.1186/s12889-019-7973-9

Abstract

BackgroundMenstruation is a normal physiological process of females at their reproductive age. However, it is surrounded with social taboos and supernatural beliefs. The poor knowledge and understanding of menstruation may lead to unsafe hygienic practice that intern increases the risk of reproductive and genito-urinary tract infections, cervical cancer, school drop-out, poor academic performance and overall poor quality of life. Despite such clinical and academic effects, the knowledge and hygienic practice of adolescent girls towards menstruation is not well addressed in Ethiopia, particularly among school adolescent girls. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess the knowledge and menstrual hygiene practice among adolescent school girls in southern Ethiopia.MethodsThis was an institutional based cross-sectional study conducted at Gedeo zone high schools among 791 randomly selected adolescent girls using multi stage sampling technique. Data were collected using interviewer administered questionnaire. The collected data were entered to EPI-INFO (soft ware) and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Bivariable and multivariable logistics analyses were computed to identify factors associated with the poor menstrual hygienic practice. During bi-variable analysis, variables with P-values of less than 0.25 were entered to multivariable model for further analysis. In the final model, P-value of less than 0.05 was used as a base to identify factors having a statistically significant association with poor menstrual hygiene practice at corresponding 95% confidence interval.ResultFrom a total of 791 adolescent girls participated in this study, 68.3% had poor knowledge of menstruation. About 48.1% of school girls used absorbent materials, and 69.5% clean their external genitalia. Generally, 60.3% of girls had poor menstrual hygienic practice. Age less than 15 years [OR = 1.71:95% CI (1.22, 2.39)], longer days of menstrual flow [OR = 2.51:95% CI (1.66, 3.80)] and poor knowledge of menses [OR = 1.48:95% CI (1.04, 2.1)] had a significantly associated with poor menstrual hygiene practice.ConclusionMajority of adolescent school girls had poor knowledge regarding menstruation and their hygienic practices are incorrect. This demonstrates a need to design acceptable awareness creation and advocacy programs to improve the knowledge and promote safe hygienic practice of adolescent school girls during menstruation.

Highlights

Menstruation is a normal physiological process of females at their reproductive age
The assumptions made during the sample size calculation was P = 39.9% based on a study done in Jimma [25], 95% confidence interval (CI) and 5% margin of error
More than half, (58.3%) were Gedeo in their ethnicity and 32.2% of adolescent school girls were living with their own parents (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Menstruation is a normal physiological process of females at their reproductive age. it is surrounded with social taboos and supernatural beliefs. The poor knowledge and understanding of menstruation may lead to unsafe hygienic practice that intern increases the risk of reproductive and genito-urinary tract infections, cervical cancer, school drop-out, poor academic performance and overall poor quality of life. Adolescent is an essential period where females are preparing and adjusting themselves to manage their menstrual bleeding in safe and clean way [3, 4] This is the ideal time that girls often join different environments including high schools and tried to plan for their adulthood life [3]. Adolescent girls perceive menstruation as something embarrassing that should be kept hidden [9,10,11,12] This can increase the vulnerability of adolescent girls to have mental, emotional and physical problems [13,14,15]. These conditions further impair the daily activities, academic performance, school attendance, and social relationships of adolescent girls [16, 17]

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