Importance of Provision of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Necessities to Adolescent Girls during Menstruation

Abstract

Background: Water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is an important component of Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) and is one of the basic necessities as mentioned in the definition of MHM given by World Health Organization (WHO). Unfortunately, many girls throughout the world are facing the dirth of even the most basic things such as toilets including girls in India. WASH facilities are an essential part of MHM at home as well as school. This cross-sectional study focuses on assessing the various Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) practices adopted by girls; availability of basic necessities like Water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities at school and home; accessibility towards safe and clean sanitary product amongst menstruating as well as non-menstruating school going adolescent girls. Material & Methods: The adolescent girls being the respondents wrote the answered the framed questions on the questionnaires which were given to them after obtaining written informed consent. The data analysis was done using SPSS 21.0 software and Chi-squared test and at some places Fisher exact test have been applied. Results: Since 91 out of 115 responded, data analysis has been done accordingly for this number of girls. The mean age of girls is 13.75 ± 1.62 years but the age group was 10 — 17 years and majority of girls attained menarche in 13- 14 years of age. 57(80%) menstruating girls used pads as the sanitary product ; almost all had toilets and water at schools and home but many (45%) did not have soaps at school ; 87.5% girls had the required privacy. MHM measures adopted by girls were satisfactory as 98.4% menstruating girls took bath daily during periods, 84.3% cleansed external genitalia once daily, and 93.7% changed their undergarments daily. Conclusion: The study reveals a strong correlation of present ages of girls with the knowledge regarding cleansing of genitalia; correlation of attending of schools with number of times sanitary product is changed; correlation of things used as sanitary product with taking bath daily and with cleansing of external genitalia.