Beyond access to adequate WASH facilities: Menstrual hygiene practices of high school adolescent girls

Menstrual hygiene has been a major problem facing Adolescent Girls at all levels of education in developing countries. Yet, it has not received the needed attention.

This study uses univariate analysis to investigate the menstrual hygiene practices of adolescent girls in Ghana, with the adoption of the Menstrual Practices Questionnaire (MPQ). A sample of 167 randomly selected adolescent girls (mean age of 14.5) from five high schools in Ghana were surveyed one time. The survey was administered in a community where access to adequate WASH facilities is sorely lacking.

Despite inadequate access to WASH facilities, majority of the girls' menstrual practices are hygienic. However, for a significant proportion of the girls, changing of menstrual materials (47.5%), washing of genitals (70.3%) and hands (70.9%), disposal of menstrual wastes (27.7%), sterilization of menstrual materials (31.4%), and management of cramps (64.5%) were found to be inadequate, poor, unhygienic, and unhealthy. Bridging this gap requires community-wide sensitization and adequate provision of WASH facilities.

Inadequate access to WASH facilities may not be as huge a hindrance to observing good menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls as reported in conventional literature. Sociocultural factors such as religion and culture might explain this phenomenon. The study therefore recommends further studies to explore factors influencing this phenomenon which would hopefully provide an idiosyncratic genesis that might go a long way in shaping the otherwise "biased" perspectives with which religion and culture are viewed in the menstrual hygiene discourse.