Edet Rebecca Edem¹, Dr Baboucarr Cham²* and Mariama Keita²

¹Final year student, Advanced Diploma in Nursing, Gambia College, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Marina Parade, Banjul, The Gambia
²Senior Lecturer, Gambia College, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Marina Parade, Banjul, The Gambia

*Corresponding Author: Dr Baboucarr Cham, Senior Lecturer, Gambia College, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Marina Parade, Banjul, The Gambia.

Received: May 09, 2022; Published: June 28, 2022

Abstract

Menstrual hygiene is an important issues that every girl and woman has to deal with in life. Although menstruation is a normal physiological process, it is still surrounded with social taboos, supernatural beliefs, misconceptions and malpractices which are very challenging for every girl. Adolescent school girls in low-income and middle-income lack appropriate facilities and support in school to manage menstruation. Therefore, the objective of this study is to assess the Demographical Survey study of Nature of Menstrual Hygiene among Adolescents’ Girls in St. Theresa’s Upper Basic School, Kanifing, The Gambia.

Method: A cross- sectional quantitative study involving 140 adolescent girls who were sampled randomly from grade (8) class using a self-administered questionnaire as a data collection tools. The data was analyzed using descriptive and the result was presented in frequency tables and percentages. The analysis of the data was done using SPSS version 20. The approval to conduct the research project was given by The St Theresa’s Upper Basic School Principal.

Results: Mothers were found to be the main source of information on menstrual hygiene. 92% (n = 129) of the respondents lack knowledge on the organs from which menstrual blood comes from. 63.6% (n = 89) had traditional believe that influences their menstrual practices and 20% (n = 28) experienced secondary stigma as a result of menstruation. 7.1% reported using antiseptic to clean the genital and 56.4% (n = 22) reported flushing of the soiled absorbents in the school toilets. 70% (n = 98) reported lack of adequate facilities in school and about 4.3% (n = 6) reported being restricted from going to school when menstruating.

Conclusion: The study findings show that the respondents had fair knowledge, negative attitude and fairly good practices towards menstrual hygiene.

Keywords: Adolescent; Menstruation,; Menarche; Puberty and Menstrual Hygiene Managements

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Citation

Citation: Dr Baboucarr Cham., et al. “The Demographical Survey Study of Nature of Menstrual Hygiene Among Adolescents’ Girls in St. Theresa’s Upper Basic School, Kanifing, The Gambia". Acta Scientific Women's Health 4.7 (2022): 110-112.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Dr Baboucarr Cham., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.