Menstruation/ Menstrual Hygiene Management among Adolescent Girls in Chittagong, Bangladesh

Abstract

Currently, the practice of menstruation and menstrual hygiene is becoming a predominant concern among adolescent girls due to lack of information of periods. Bangladesh as a developing country where menstruation is still being practice as a shameful or secret period of women‟s life, and there is several numbers of misconceptions and stigma behind menstruation circle. The purpose of the study is to reduce the misconceptions and stigma, which are still around the practice of menstruation, the way to promote healthy menstrual hygiene practice among adolescent girls in Chittagong. The research is based on quantitative data, and the training session. In addition, we first gave the survey to access the information of girls‟ knowledge and understanding about menstruation. Then we conducted training by discussing and sharing about the knowledge of menstruation and menstrual hygiene. After the training, we gave survey again for getting the outcome about how well they understood and improved. The total numbers of participants were 228. The age of the girls were among 10 to 17 years aged, from class 5 to 10. Among of those 228 girls, the research found out that 8.5 % already started their period and 16.2 % have not started their period, but 1.3 % did not complete the question. Out of 228 girls, there were 52.2% say girls during period are impure and 45.2% answered that it is normal and 2.6% did not give any answer the question. According to the final survey after the training, we have figured out that 36.8% answered girls are impure when they are on period and there were 61.4% understand that menstruation is not the issue of impurity and 1.8% did not even answer.