While being critical for the actual health of the Nation, Female Hygiene and Child Nutrition has never been given priority early on, but now we are at a junction where the citizen specially women have started to recognise the importance. It is time for a more focused effort to educate about the former and eradicate the other. According an article by LSE, both of these problems have exacerbated during the pandemic. Menstrual Hygiene is still a taboo in India, even after the steps undertaken by the government under its free sanitary distribution campaign. The problem is the dependence on Male members of the family who procure the goods for the household, and the hesitation to ask for, as the free supply from the school have stopped. Given the state of our sanitation and ignorance about hygiene, women face problems in their endeavour for personal sanitary hygiene, vis-a-vis changing menstrual pads, or washing cloth pads which are most commonly used due to lack of access, and also drying these cloth pads in sunlight for proper disinfection.
We run awareness campaigns in the grassroot rural to sensitize about hygiene along with distribution of sanitary pads. Along with the female hygiene our secondary goal is to create awareness and help eradicate Malnutrition. Malnutrition is bane for India, where nearly 14% of the population is undernourished. Even the awareness about basic dietary requirement for pregnant women and children under the age of 5 is not there. So, we set up awareness programs in rural India, to encourage hygiene and ways and means for fulfilling the gaps in the diet of the people. We inform and create awareness about various government schemes to help root these obstacles out.
