Menstrual hygiene and infections: Menacing women health

Menstrual hygiene and infections: Menacing women health: Priya Sharma, NL Gupta



International Journal of Health & Allied Sciences 2020 9(2):99-104



Good menstrual hygiene is fundamental to health, education, work and wellbeing of women everywhere. Menstruation is a natural part of human existence. Yet it has been neglected for decades in all sectors as well as at individual level. Menstruation remains a taboo in many societies and various negative cultural attitudes and beliefs are still associated with it. Menstruating women and girls are often associated with terms like dirt, filth, stink, impure and so which leads to forceful seclusion, reduced mobility, social, cultural and dietary restrictions. Adolescent girls are mostly kept away from facts and thus remain ignorant of the issues they suffer due to ignorance in their daily health and hygiene practices which result into adverse health outcomes. To delineate determinants of menstruation and to assess progress on perspectives with respect to change in the process of menstruation. Relevant available literature with appropriated methodology on the topic menstruation was taken up with focus on studies over the last decade. The search was strategically done to include an extensive list of concepts, beliefs, process and management to capture the various degrees of difference in perceptions and expressions, demographic and sociocultural factors as well as related subject matter adjusted accordingly to different set of data. The United Nations millennium development goal 2 and 3 directly focused on menstrual hygiene and management for universal education and on gender equality and women empowerment. However, less attention was paid on these issues in developing countries and even the work done on this is not much to explore this neglected aspect of women health. Literature on these particular aspects of women remain extremely scarce and to make things even worse sanitary section is just not touched and more so combined with stigma around it.