QUESTION
Booklet on menstrual hygiene management by UNICEF - Request suggestions and feedback

From Lizette Burgers, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), New Delhi

Posted 24 March 2008

Dear Members,

The Government of India launched the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), a comprehensive national program to ensure sanitation facilities in rural areas, in 1999. Despite a rapid increase in sanitation coverage, the agenda of achieving total sanitation remains incomplete without addressing the sanitation needs of women specially related to Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM). This is rights based issue of women accessing clean hygienic methods for healthy living with dignity. The issue stems from lack of access to information and affordability.

Given the fact that adolescent girls face considerable amount of embarrassment due to lack of information on time, being not guided by even peers and lack of affordability for sanitary napkins, their school attendance and over all confidence level suffers.

The Department of Rural Development in Tamil Nadu with support of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has initiated comprehensive action to deal with these issues by engaging NGOs and women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in creating awareness and building their capacities to manufacture low cost sanitary napkins, adopting innovative marketing strategies to reach the rural women, involving adolescent girls in providing information and developing mechanisms for safe disposal at the school, household and at community level.

Please click on the following link to know more about the workshop on menstrual hygienehttp:// www.unicef.org/india/wes_2819.htm.

UNICEF has developed a booklet on “Sharing Simple Facts: Useful Information about Menstrual Health and Hygiene” that can be downloaded from the link http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/gender/cr/res11030801.pdf (PDF, Size: 2.80 MB).

We would like to request suggestions and feedback on the booklet, based on members experiences and expertise, specifically we would like comments on: · Relevance of the booklet, in terms of content, approach etc. · Whether the issue of MHM should be included as an integral part of the TSC or is better taken forward by the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)?

Additionally, please share your opinion/ experiences about making MHM or related topics compulsory in higher secondary schools- How is the issue dealt with currently, what is the adequacy of content of the curriculum used, what are the actual transactions in the classroom and constraints.

Your responses will be valuable to us in framing up our strategies.

Please see attachment below for the responses.

by
24 March 2008