Background: Adequate menstrual health knowledge can help adolescent girls understand menstruation, prepare for menarche and adopt appropriate hygiene practices. However, access to accurate information varies across settings, and evidence from suburban communities in southern Nigeria remains limited. This paper examined menstrual hygiene awareness, knowledge, timing and sources of information, and their sociodemographic associations among female secondary-school students in suburban Edo State, Nigeria.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among female adolescents who had attained menarche in three randomly selected secondary schools in Okada, Edo State. Of 344 questionnaires prepared for administration, 310 were completed and analysed, representing a response rate of approximately 90%. Data were collected using a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise awareness, knowledge and information sources, while Pearson's chi-square test examined associations between categorised menstrual hygiene awareness and age, school class and religion. Statistical significance was set at p < .05.

Results: The mean age of respondents was 14.21 ± 1.36 years, and 84.5% were aged 13-16 years. Nearly all respondents, 304 (98.1%), had heard about menstrual hygiene. More than half, 169 (54.5%), reported first receiving menstrual hygiene information between 8 and 11 years of age, while 123 (39.6%) first received such information between 12 and 14 years. Knowledge of the basic hygiene components assessed was high: all 310 respondents correctly recognised that menstrual hygiene involves adequate changing of menstrual materials and regular bathing, while 297 (95.8%) correctly identified appropriate disposal of used menstrual materials as a component of menstrual hygiene. Teachers were the most frequently reported source of information, 272 (87.7%), followed by mothers, 237 (76.5%), and sisters, 197 (63.5%). Health workers, 98 (31.6%), and television or social media, 92 (29.7%), were less frequently identified, while no respondent reported receiving menstrual hygiene information from a father. Categorised menstrual hygiene awareness differed significantly by age, χ² = 14.818, p = .001; school class, χ² = 109.861, p < .001; and religion, χ² = 12.230, p < .001.

Conclusion: Menstrual hygiene awareness and knowledge of the basic hygiene concepts assessed were high among the surveyed adolescents. Schools and female family members constituted the principal information channels, while fathers were absent from the reported information pathway. The significant sociodemographic differences in awareness indicate that menstrual health information was not distributed uniformly across the sampled population. Age-appropriate, accurate and sufficiently comprehensive menstrual health education should therefore remain an important component of school and family-based adolescent health education.