Adolescent Male Awareness and Support on Menstrual Hygiene Management in the Sagnarigu Municipality of Northern Region

Abstract

In recent times, Menstrual Hygiene Management has become an issue of concern to both public health scholars and practitioners. However, managing menstruation hygienically has been a neglected issue which unfortunately has truncated the educational progress of several girls and women, particularly in developing countries. Scholarly debate on MHM is raging but focused on girls and women since MHM is seen as a ‘women issue’. Reckoning the importance of males in MHM, the scholarly and practice debates have been extended to embrace boys and men. This study contributed to the debate on MHM by focusing on adolescent male awareness and support on menstrual hygiene management in the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region of Ghana. An exploratory descriptive research design was adopted with a purposive sampling technique and a sample size of 15 adolescent males were recruited from Kalpohin Senior High School. Data was gathered using a semi-structured interview guide with an indepth face-to-face interview of each participant which lasted between 35 and 45 minutes. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the data was analysed thematically based on the five major theoretical themes of the constructs. Three emerged themes were identified from the data with twenty-three subthemes. Specifically, the findings revealed that adolescent males have some appreciable knowledge about menstruation and MHM as they contended their willingness to support female colleagues to manage menstruation hygienically. Recommendations from findings have been made to ministries of education and health.