Whats in that black bag?

1

I still remember that black colour poly bag wrapped around something which my sister use to buy from the neighbourhood house. I and my sister used to talk about a lot of things going in our life but the thing inside the black polybag was abandoned.
56 – 66% of the girls in our country do not know about menstrual hygiene before reaching menarche. 89% of our Indian girls use cloth and rags during the periods.
There are majorly four problems associated with the menstrual hygiene:
  1. Hesitant to talk.
  2. Commitment to cloth
  3. Convenience to buy
  4. Cost of pads.
” 27 per cent of girls out of school did not use any material at all. An assessment conducted in Chhattisgarh revealed that none of the shops in 65 villages stocked sanitary napkins.”
                                                                                                                           -UNESCO Report.
In Indian society, menstruation is associated with impurity, secrecy and shame. Restrictions are placed on the mobility of the girls which in turn limits their school attendance. Indian culture and dogma related to menstruation make it more difficult to discuss the topic. Many of the girls living in the rural area find it to difficult to go to a medical shop to buy sanitary napkins.
Economical constraints and convenience to buy are the major reason why menstrual hygiene remains such a big problem in India. Many of the government scheme to provide low-cost pads, such as SUVIDHA are available in ‘Jan aushadhi kendra’ but convenience to buy remains a major problem to such scheme.
To solve this problem we need open stores in such a place that every young girl find it very convenient to buy at low cost. One such place is’ schools’. The right place to break the dogma and myths to bring awareness and educated learning about this topic.