Menstrual Hygiene Day

Menstrual Hygiene Day, is an annualawareness dayon May 28 to highlight the importance of goodmenstrual hygiene management (MHM). It was initiated by the German-basedNGO WASH Unitedin 2014 and aims to benefit women and girls worldwide. The 28th was selected to acknowledge that 28 days is the average length of the menstrual cycle.

Women and adolescent girls use a clean material to absorb or collect menstrual blood, and this material can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of menstruation.

Objectives

Menstrual hygiene day is meant to serve as a platform to bring together individuals, organisations,social businesses and the media to create a united and strong voice for women and girls around the world, helping to break the silence about menstrual hygiene management.

The objectives of Menstrual Hygiene management include and cover various aspects related to it as it addresses the challenges and hardships many women and girls face during their menstruation. It highlights the positive and innovative solutions being taken to address these challenges. It catalyses a growing, global movement that recognizes and supports girl’s and women’s rights and build partnerships among those partners on national and local level. It engages in policy dialogue and actively advocate for the integration of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) into global, national and local policies and programmes. It creates an occasion for media work, includingsocial media

Menstrual Hygiene Day makes audible and visible a growing movement that promotes body literacy and autonomy, as well asgender.

Menstrual hygiene management can be particularly challenging for girls and women in developing countries, where clean water and toilet facilities are often inadequate. In addition, traditional cultures make it difficult to discuss menstruation openly. This limits women’s and adolescent girls’ access to relevant and important information about the normal functions of their own body. This directly affects their health, education anddignity. Access to information can be considered ahuman right

The goal ofmenstrual hygienemanagement is to ensure that women and girls can manage theirperiodsin a way that is not only healthy, but that enables their full participation in school, work, and other activities. ... Because at its essence, menstruationis about reproduction.

-Akanksha Khandelwal