Awareness about reproductive tract infection, its relation with menstrual hygiene management and health seeking behaviour: A cross-sectional study among adolescent girls of Lucknow

BACKGROUND: The reproductive tract infection (RTI) is one of the major health issues associated with menstrual hygiene management which often goes unnoticed and hence remains underdiagnosed and untreated, resulting in devastating health effects on women. It gives way to some common complications like pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), ectopic pregnancy, infertility, adverse outcomes of pregnancy, neonatal morbidity and death (in case of a coexisting grievous disease like Human immune deficiency virus (HIV)). METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the rural and urban government schools of Lucknow, using two-stage cluster sampling separately for both urban and rural areas. Two schools (one co-education and one all girls) were chosen from each area. A total of 629 participants were taken for the study, 389 from urban and 240 from rural schools. The study subjects were taken proportionately from each school for an interview-based session using a pre-designed and pretested questionnaire. Descriptive analysis and Chi-square tests were used to analyse the quantitative data. RESULT: A total of 629 participants were taken for the study, from rural (240) and urban schools (389) of Lucknow. From urban, 50.9% had fair knowledge about RTI. Whereas 71.3% from urban had fair knowledge about RTI. Lower abdominal pain (54.8%) and vaginal discharge (32.6%) were the most common complaint reported by the participants related to RTI. Only 58.1% from urban and 32.6% from rural used sanitary pads as menstrual absorbents. The presence of vaginal discharge showed a significant relation (P value < 0.001) with the type of menstrual absorbent used. CONCLUSION: The knowledge related to RTI and menstrual hygiene practices has not changed significantly with time. Which is amongst the primary prevention that could be employed to prevent RTI and the consequences arising from a physiological cause.