Exclusive: ‘Pad Couple' Distributes Sanitary Napkins, Underwear To 5 Lakhs Women To Eradicate Period Poverty

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Menstruation is a universal female biological experience and is a monthly shedding of the lining of the uterus. So, you must be thinking by now what's the big deal? Well, you will be wrong, actually very, very wrong!

Imagine waking up to a bed soaked with blood or a skirt stained with blood in a school and feeling frightened and hopelessly running towards the school lavatory wondering what went wrong with your body and then someone helps you out with a tattered, dirty piece of cloth, in school or home and you keep using it your entire life, till one day, surprisingly you realize that you have cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer in females across the world and the second most common, in India which accounts for 27% of global cervical cancer cases, mentions a report by Bio Med Central.

In an exclusive interview with Boldsky, Pad Couple of India, Meena Mehta and Atul Mehta share why eradicating period poverty is the need of the hour, and how menstrual hygiene got affected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Availability Works Better Than Awareness

Fondly known as 'Pad Dadi' from Surat (Gujarat), 68-year-old Meena Mehta says, 'No one deserves to die because of period stigma' and 'did it ever occur to you that if women do not have underwear what will they do with a packet of sanitary napkins? It is simply useless,' she recalls asking actor Akshay Kumar when he was promoting his film Padman. This made the actor so emotional that he decided to support Meena's cause by donating 5 lakhs to support her work.

As per Whisper and UNESCO's studies, about 71% of adolescent girls in India remain unaware of menstruation until they get their first period, which adversely affects their confidence and self-esteem. Further, a report by Dasra NGO has pointed out that 23 million girls drop out of school annually due to a lack of menstrual hygiene management facilities, which include the availability of sanitary pads and information about menstruation.

The couple is running Manuni Foundation since 2013 and till now they have distributed sanitary napkins and underwear to 5 lakh women including school children, Anganwadi workers, police constables, and female patients. 'It started by helping 5 girl students, and now we cover 35 municipality schools,' says Meena Mehta.

The average woman will menstruate once a month, for roughly 35 to 40 years of her life. That's approximately 3000 days-more than 8 years-of periods during her lifetime. At any given time, 800 million women and youth worldwide are menstruating, says a report by WaterAid NGO.

According to the National Health And Family Survey-5 (2019-2021), there are 242 million adolescents aged 10-19 in India comprising 18% of the total population and among them 116 million are girls and 70% of women aged 15-24 in rural India do not use sanitary napkins during their periods.

Due to poor menstrual hygiene, there can be urinary tract infections (UTIs), dermatitis, alteration in the pH balance of vaginal secretions, bacterial vaginosis, and genital tract infection, all of which can increase the susceptibility of females to cervical cancer.

These are not just statistics, but a mirror of a skewed reality of woman's menstrual health and hygiene in India.

Eradicating Period Poverty: A Little Bit Of Kindness That Goes A Long Way

Talking about the ground reality in India when it comes to menstrual hygiene, Meena Mehta says, 'I have seen children sharing underwear with the other female members in their house, that too picked up either from garbage or they got it from someone sometime back. They do not wear underwear on a daily basis but use it by turn when they are on their periods. This makes them vulnerable to numerous health diseases, some of which are fatal.'

This moved the couple deeply and therefore, for the past 10 years, they made it a mission to remove the period poverty. Twice a month, they take rickshaws/thelas to the schools, filled with sanitary napkins, underwear and sports bras and distribute them to people in need, especially school children, and working women in need. Apart from that they help physically disabled women and transgenders too, so that no one is left behind when it comes to menstrual hygiene.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the hygiene practices related to menstruation dropped significantly due to the unavailability of proper sanitary napkins and some had turned to unhygienic alternatives. Unlike in Scotland, where sanitary products are free for anyone in the country, in India, a woman has to pay at least 10 rupees to get a pack of sanitary napkins, and it can be difficult for some, especially ones residing in rural areas.

A 2021 study by a UK-based charity, Toybox on street children revealed that at least 1 in 10 girls in India below the age of 21 cannot afford menstrual products and end up using unhygienic alternatives. For a while, these women-hygiene products were not on the Government's list of essential items, which further, aggravated the issue of period poverty, driven by the fall in supply and rise in costs.

The same study pointed out that during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, there was a shortage in the supply of sanitary products as manufacturers focused more on making face masks than sanitary products. It also reveals that about 70% of reproductive health issues are the result of poor menstrual hygiene.

Every year, 28 May is observed as World Menstrual Hygiene Day and this year the theme is 'Making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030. While the current scenario is quite grim, the future is full of hope.

On being asked whether they think that the menstrual hygiene scenario in India will change anytime soon, the couple says There is no team, I believe two heads and four hands are good enough to eradicate period poverty in India and if others join, it is even better. All you need to do is talk less and work more in this area. Instead of putting banners and using hashtags, try distributing pads and underwear to women in need.'