 Corresponding author: Jayashri Bute, Professor, SMAC & PGI, Indore. Email address-drjayashri@gmail.com Copyright © 2023 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0. Basic Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) practices among school adolescents of rural area, Indore: A comparative study Jayashri B Bute 1, * , Teena M Gupta 1 and Kishore N Chinchodkar 2 1 Department of Community Medicine, Sri Aurobindo University, Indore, India 2 Department of Community Medicine, Zydus Medical College, Dahod, Gujarat, India. Magna Scientia Advanced Research and Reviews, 2023, 08(01), 173–181 Publication history: Received on 19 March 2023; revised on 24 June 2023; accepted on 26 June 2023 Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.30574/msarr.2023.8.1.0059 Abstract Background: Young teens are more vulnerable to a variety of infections, particularly teenage girls if they don't take care of their hygiene. The reason of conducting studies in schools is as they spend more than one third of their lifetime in school. School environment, supply of potable water, etc. impact on healthy development. Material and methods: This is a cross-sectional study carried out in the field of RHTC practice at Indore Medical College from February to April 2019. A structured pro- forma that included questions about basic sanitation, water and hygiene practices, is used to gather data from teenagers studying in public and private schools. 200 students from public schools and 200 private schools in Grades 6 to 10 were selected by Quota Sampling to compare WASH practices among themselves. Results: The majority of teenagers in private schools have good levels of personal hygiene 58.3% compared to public schools 41.7%. Standards of personal hygiene increased with age. The majority of 95% of teenagers used drinking water sources in the private sector as opposed to adolescents in public schools. In the study, 73% of private schools had separate washrooms for girls and boys, compared with 89.5% of public schools. Nearly all washrooms in private schools were clean, compared with 40% in public schools. Bins were available in 67% of adolescents in private schools, compared with 34% of adolescents in public schools. Handwashing practices were found to be satisfactory among teens at both schools. Conclusion: Following the launch of the Swatch Bharat Abhiyan, overall WASH practices are enhanced. Practices among teenagers in private schools were found to be satisfactory, but improvements were also observed in public schools. Most of the time, teenagers miss school for lack of core WASH practices. Key words: Basic Services; Water; Sanitation; Hygiene Practices; Government school 1. Introduction Adolescence is one of the most rapidly developing stages of human development. The mostly personality of the individual and the environment affects the changes that occur in adolescence. Younger teenagers are especially vulnerable when their abilities are still under development. Changes in adolescence have health implications not only in adolescence, but throughout life. [1] About 1.2 billion people, or 18 per cent, or 1 in 6 of the world's population, are adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19. More than 3,000 teenagers die each day for avoidable or treatable reasons. Half of all mental health issues in