School Absenteeism During Menstruation Among Rural Adolescent Girls in Pune

Authors

  • Suman Bodat Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University Medical College, Pune
  • Mrunalini M Ghate Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University Medical College, Pune
  • Jyoti R Majumdar Government of India, New Delhi, India

Keywords:

Absenteeism, School sanitation facilities

Abstract

Background: Menstrual related problems and inadequate school sanitation facilities have an adverse effect on adolescent girl′s academic performance and school attendance especially in rural setting. The following study was undertaken to determine school absenteeism during menstruation period.

Objective: To assess the impact of menstruation on school attendance and factors affecting menstruation management.

Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted in rural field practice area of Rural Heath Training Centre under Medical College, Pune among 740 adolescent girls in school by using pre-tested structured-questionnaires.

Results: It was noticed that 269 (43.2%) girls used to remain absent from school during menstruation period. School absenteeism was significantly associated with menstrual disorders, socio economic status, material used during menstruation and abdominal pain during menstruation. Nearly 339 (54.5%) of rural girls bring pads/cloths to schools during menstruation while 283 (45.5%) do not bring pads/cloths to schools due to inadequate sanitation facilities.

Conclusion: To prevent school absenteeism among these girls and intervention focusing on school menstrual management facilities and reproductive health education sessions is needed.

References

Adolescence an age of opportunity UNICEF, New Delhi India, 2011.p 1-2

Anil k Agarwal and Anju Agarwal. A study of Dysmenorrhea during Menstruation in Adolescent girl. IJCM, 2010; 35(1); 159-164.

Noorbakhsh Mahvash, Alijani Eidy, Kohandel Mehdi, Mehdizadeh Toorzani Zahra, Mirfaizi Mani and 1Hojat Shahla. The Effect of Physical Activity on Primary Dysmenorrhea of Female University Stu-dents. World Applied Sciences Journal. 2012; 17 (10): 1246-1252.

Desalegn Tegabu Zegeye, Berihun Megabiaw and Abay Mulu. Age at menarche and the menstrual pat-tern of secondary school adolescents in northwest Ethiopia.BMC Women's Health.2009, 9:29; 1-8. Available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com. [Cited on September16,2012]

Anita Pradhan. Is menstrual hygiene and manage-ment an issue for adolescent school girls? Water Aid: A comparative study of four schools in different set-tings of Nepal. Nepal, 2009.Available from www.wateraid.org/nepal. [cited on March 4 2011]

C.Abou Zahr, J P Vaughn. Assessing the burden of sexual and reproductive ill-health: questions regard-ing the use of disability adjusted life years. Bulletin of World Health Organization. 2000; 78; 655– 666.

Dr. P.B. Verma, Dr. C.M. Pandya, Dr. V.A. Ramanuj, Dr. M.P. Singh. Menstrual Pattern of Adolescent School Girls of Bhavnagar (Gujarat) NJIRM 2011; 2(1); 38-40.

Ray Sudeshna, Dasgupta.Aparajita. Determinants of menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls: A Multi-variate Analysis. National Journal of Community Medicine 2012; 3(2); 294-301.

Avril M. Houston, Anisha Abraham, Zhihuan Huang, and Lawrence J. D’Angelo.Knowledge, Attitudes, and Consequences of Menstrual Health in Urban Adoles-cent Females. J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol .2006; 19:271-275.

Suresh K. Kumbhar, Mrudula Reddy,Sujana B,Roja Reddy k,Divya Bhargavi k , C Balkrishna .Prevalence of dysmenorrhea among adolescent girls (14-19yrs) of Kadapa district and its impact on quality of life :A cross sectional study .National Journal of Community Medicine. 2011; 2(2):265-268.

Saadatu Talatu Sule, Josephine Egbunu Ukwen-ya.Menstrual Experiences of Adolescents in a Second-ary School. J Turkish-German Gynecol Assoc, 2007; 8(1); 7-14.

Abhimanyu Kumar and Anshu Taunk. A study of sanitation of toilets in elementary and senior Second-ary schools located in rural areas of Uttarakhand state in India. International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology. 2010; 2(8): 178-184

J P Majra and A Gur .School Environment and Sanitation in Rural India J Glob Infect Dis. 2010; 2(2): 109–111.

Downloads

Published

2013-06-30

How to Cite

1.
Bodat S, Ghate MM, Majumdar JR. School Absenteeism During Menstruation Among Rural Adolescent Girls in Pune. Natl J Community Med [Internet]. 2013 Jun. 30 [cited 2024 Dec. 22];4(02):212-6. Available from: https://njcmindia.com/index.php/file/article/view/1498

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 02 (2013)

Section

Original Research Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.