According to UNICEF, every month, 1.8 billion people across the world menstruate. Millions of these girls, women, transgender men and non-binary persons are unable to manage their menstrual cycle in a dignified, healthy way. Before the COVID-19 pandemic started, more than 500 million women worldwide did not have what they needed to manage their menstruation. And this period could not stop in pandemics. Therefore, it is critical to include menstrual health and hygiene in COVID-19 emergency response interventions and policies.
So, considering the need for awareness about menstrual hygiene management and of the facilities and materials required to maintain hygiene during the Covid-19 pandemic, SumArth in partnership with The Pad Project felt the urge to address this issue and provide some solutions to it.
Team SumArth has conducted quite many sessions on menstrual health management in villages and school- making the women and girls understand the importance of menstrual hygiene during menstruation. The sessions/workshops focus on topics like- puberty, nutrition required while growing up, menstruation and its physiology, preparing for periods, maintaining hygiene during menstruation, taboos associated with periods and disposal of used sanitary napkins or cloth after use.
We have educated more than 3000 menstruators on MHM. We even discuss about reproductive diseases caused by ill menstrual practices. Not only this, SumArth has also distributed 15,000 sanitary napkins to the women and girls of the marginalized community. The pads have been distributed in around 40 villages of three blocks of Gaya district, viz. Banke Bazaar, Bodhgaya and Imamganj. Team SumArth has reached out to around 1500 women and girls during the pandemic.