Menstruation health awareness and knowledge gap among the rural girls: A cross-sectional research study

Background: The health literacy in menstruation is a grave but not sufficiently recognized side of adolescent health, particularly in rural India where there are socio-cultural taboos and barriers that are in place to prevent the access to quality information and resources. Such a major awareness gap exposes girls to health hazards, educational discontinuities and psychosocial anguish.

Purpose: This paper set out to determine the overall awareness and the exact knowledge deficits among rural adolescent schoolgirls in Kaimur district, Bihar, India in terms of menstrual health.

Methods: It was a community-based, descriptive cross-sectional study that involved 400 adolescent girls (13-19 years) selected randomly in two rural blocks in government schools. A pretested, structured and self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data. Such variables were socio-demographics, menstrual history, physiology and hygiene awareness, information sources and common practices. The analysis of data was based on descriptive statistics and inferential test (Chi-square) performed on SPSS software.

Findings: The average age of the participants was 15.4 (1.6) years, and menarche age was 13.1 (1.2) years. Menstrual biology awareness was extremely low: only 34.0% of individuals were able to correctly say what a uterus was the source of bleeding and 18.5 percent knew it to be endometrial shedding. The paediatric mothers were the biggest sources of information (76.5 percent) whereas formal sources such as teachers (13.8 percent) and health workers (4.5 percent) had little roles. There were critical knowledge gaps on hygiene management: 69.0% of the respondents had no knowledge about the necessity to change the absorbents after 4-6 hours, and only a small percentage of customers who used sanitary pads did safe disposal. The majority of the girls (88.8%) had dysmenorrhea, where 72.5% believed that severe pain was normal which means there is lack of health literacy. There were significant positive correlations on the issue of improved awareness and improved school grade (p<0.001) and media exposure (p=0.002).

Conclusion: The research demonstrates that there is a serious lack of menstrual health literacy in rural adolescents, biological misconceptions, use of informal sources of information, and hazardous knowledge gaps in the practical hygiene and health management knowledge. The observations point out that such gaps need systematic school based educational programs, educator preparation and community engagement to fill these gaps, safeguard health and maintain educational achievement and esteem of girls.