A community-based study of menstrual hygiene practices and willingness to pay for sanitary napkins among women of a rural community in northern India.

BACKGROUND: Hygiene-related practices of women during menstruation are of paramount importance. There is a lack of sizeable literature on menstrual practices from northern India. We documented the menstrual hygiene practices of rural women and assessed their willingness to pay for sanitary napkins. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was done in villages under the Comprehensive Rural Health Services Project (CRHSP), situated in Ballabgarh, Haryana. The study participants were women in the age group of 15-45 years. Nine villages were selected randomly while the number of respondents in each selected village was decided through the probability propor-tionate to size sampling method. The households were selected using systematic sampling. One woman was interviewed in each household using a pre-tested questionnaire. RESULTS: A total of 995 women were interviewed. A majority of them (62%) were unaware of the reason(s) for menstruation. The role of the health sector in providing information regarding menstruation was low as only a few women (1.5%) had got information from the auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM)/health worker (HW). For the majority of women, besides religious activities, other routine activities did not suffer during menstruation. Only 28.8% of women were using sanitary napkins and of those who did not use napkins, only one-fourth (25.3%) were willing to buy them. The mean (SD) price per napkin that these women were ready to pay was Rs. 0.54 (0.43), equivalent to US$ 0.01. CONCLUSION: Women in the reproductive age group should be provided with appropriate information about menstruation, and they should be told about the advantages of using sanitary napkins. Health sector functionaries should play a proactive role in the delivery of such information.