Assessment of knowledge and practice of menstrual hygiene among the female nursing students in a selected private nursing college in Dhaka City

Background: Adolescent females are often uninformed and inexperienced on most health-related issues including menstruation. The problems of menstrual hygiene are inadequately acknowledged and has not received any proper attention as well. This study was aimed to assess the level of knowledge and practice of menstrual hygiene among the female nursing students in Bangladesh.Methods: A total of 106 female nursing students were selected from Grameen Caledonian College of nursing using purposive sampling technique.  A descriptive cross-sectional type of study was used. Data were collected directly using self-administered semi-structured questionnaire developed and was analysed using SPSS version 22.0.Results: In this study more than six-tenths (63.2%) of the respondents were 20 years and below and most of them (74.5%) were unmarried.  About 60.4% of them were currently running diploma in nursing and the rest (38.6%) were B.Sc. nursing students. About 72.6% of the respondent’s mothers had above HSC level of education and most of them (61.3%) were from nuclear family.  Little above half (51.9%) of the respondents mentioned that menstruation is the uterine bleeding and the majority (67.0%) of the respondents were surprised during their first menstruation. Most of the respondents source of information about menstruation before menarche was sister (95.3%), followed by friend (92.5%), mother (67.9%) and the rest mentioned the teacher (62.3%). About 76.5% of the respondents mentioned that their mode of disposal of absorbents was dustbin and most of them (68.9%) used water and soap to clean their genital area after menstruation.Conclusions: The study was concluded that more than half of the respondents had moderate level of knowledge and practice regarding the menstrual hygiene. Most of the (67.0%) of the respondents were surprised during their first menstruation and close to eight-tenths (79.2%) mentioned they had a regular usual menstrual cycle. There is need for more awareness regarding the information on good menstrual hygiene practices

Study of rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea (Hebert) of Bangladesh

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, based upon the random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used to assess the genetic variability among thirty nine isolate of M. grisea the causal organism of rice blast diseases, isolated from rice and three weed species from Bangladesh and a range of other countries. Sixty different DNA fragments of 0.2 to 2.8 kb were obtained using five 10-mer primers of arbitrary nucleotide sequences. Computer analysis of these data from five random primers showed a high genetic variability. The isolates that infect weed species Leersia hexendra were found to be genetically different from rice infecting and two other rice non-infecting isolates. In contrast isolates from weed species Digitaria setigera and Panicum repens shared a common RAPD profile produced by some of the rice infecting isolates.The results suggest that the M. grisea populations infecting these two weed species may provide inoculum for rice blast disease in Bangladesh. Within these M. grisea isolates (weed and rice host) variation in the RAPD profiles did not appear to be related to origin, morphological characters or mating types. Further one band (approximately 0.79 kb), consistently appearing with rice infecting isolates when genomic DNA was amplified with primer (OPD-1), was used as a probe in Southern hybridizations. From the macroscopic symptom study, it was found that isolate Po28292 from weed species P. repens is nonpathogenic to rice. The L. hexendra weed host isolate Po29192 produced lesion type three on susceptible rice plants and is considered as a poor pathogen of rice. Poor pathogenicity is associated with reduced appressorium formation with longer germ tube and hypersensitive cell death. Further, the appressorium formation was not affected by the resistant or susceptible plant leaf surface.</p