Menstrual hygiene in
India is one of the major matter of debate. Furthermore, a large amount of
research has shown that lack of hygiene and infrastructure lead girls to drop out schools in rural areas of India. According to Darsa, 23 million
girls drop out of school annually due to lack of proper menstrual hygiene
management facilities, which include availability of sanitary napkins and
logical awareness of menstruation. Taboos related to periods is the second
reason involving young girls from villages to stay at home. Hence, we can
assume two points regarding education in India:
- There is a huge difference between genders about life opportunities, due to cultural and infra structural reasons;
- There is a significant difference between the urban lifestyle and the rural one.
At the same time, it is well known that the 10 world’s fastest growing
cities are Indian. According to the Global Cities Report 2018 by the institute
Oxford Economics: Surat; Agra; Bengaluru; Hyderabad; Nagpur; Tiruppur; Rajkot;
Tiruchirappalli; Chennai and Vijayawada. As a result, is quite clear the huge
economic (and cultural) gap that stands between modern cities and rural
villages.
Therefore, what can we do in practice in order to bring menstrual hygiene
equality? NGOs’ work seems to be the main way to truly obtain an improvement in
social-welfare, hygiene and knowledge about healthcare and taboos constraints.
Since 2010 Heeals is strongly concerned in programmes with villages and
rural communities about Wash; Menstrual Hygiene and Health. We belief that education
about health care is a priority and because of that we are always working hard
on our workshops and new programmes. For instance, the aim of our “Pads for
Girls” project is to improve local hygene conditions and economy in Western
Uttar Pradesh: we want to buy a sanitary napkins machine and bring it in the
village. We deeply believe that this project could improve the local economy,
selling napkins especially in local markets. Also, it will be certainly the
only way for village women to get sanitary napkins.
-Nancy
(Wash Intern)
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