Raising Consciousness on MHM among Disabled Women

Menstrual hygiene management is an essential part for every young and adult woman. But menstrual issues are still a taboo in the rural parts of Bangladesh. Let alone the hygiene maintenance, to some extent talking about this topic openly is regarded as a restricted or prohibited matter. In Bangladesh, approximately 10% of the population, or 164m people, live with a disability (Centre for Disability in Development, 2021). Around half of this portion is women. Thus, women with disabilities face more challenges regarding their dependence on their family, which includes insufficient free medicine support or medical services, financial support from government as monthly allowance and taboo regarding MHM practices. Hence most of the women with disabilities are completely unaware of the healthy practices of hygiene maintenance during menstruation. According to a report of BRAC JPG, sexual and reproductive health services (SRHR) are limited to only a handful of services (pregnancy test, family planning). There is even a misconception that people with disabilities are asexual, or less sexually active, and as a result, they are less likely to require SRHR services.

Thus, this necessity is often neglected when it comes to the women and girls with disability. Barguna is one of the disaster-prone coastal districts of Bangladesh. There are around 400 young and adult women with disabilities living in several upazillas under this district. Caretakers' and family members' views and beliefs about gender, age, disability, and sexuality often affect the opportunities of WWDs to obtain SRHR information and services and to make free decisions about sexuality and sexual health. Financial constraints, lack of awareness among the family members, high price of hygiene supplies is also some of the core reasons why WWDs in the Barguna district are being neglected from MHM products as well as related knowledges. As a vulnerable community, WWDs in this zone need sufficient MHM related services to create awareness among themselves as well as their family members and develop hygiene practices. 

The solution is to create 4 awareness sessions on menstrual Hygine Management in 4 upazillas of Barguna to create a sense of consciousness among themselves to remove the barriers, stigma about menstrual issues and encourage people to engage in menstrual hygiene practices.

The targeted beneficiaries of this program will be around 500 (250 from each upazilla) vulnerable young and adult women of Barguna district, mostly from lower and lower-middle income households. The program will especially focus on the woman with different types of disabilities (WWDs). These groups of women are often the ones who are at higher risk of menstrual health hazards. They not only lack adequate knowledge about menstrual hygiene management (MHM) but also have lesser access to resources due to financial and social issues.

Under this solution, following activities will be initiated –

• Identify, communicate, and select the intended beneficiaries i.e., women with disabilities to ascertain their needs.
• Create a database with their information such as menstrual issues, personal and family details, health issues (which can be later used) that will be digitalised and can be shared with doctors, local clinics which will be helpful for them to know about patient history before any treatment or prescribing medicines.
• An awareness campaign with practical demonstration and discussion part for the beneficiaries will be arranged. There will be two part of the campaign – in the first part, a discussion session with specialists on the importance of menstrual hygiene practices, discussion on barriers and stigma related to menstruation and practical demonstration of how to maintain cleanliness and hygiene practices for WWDs.
• In the second part, there will be booths, where the participants will register their details and provided with hygiene kits, guidelines of usage and cleanliness maintenance. The database with the beneficiaries’ information will be stored for future use. A 24 hours helpline will also be provided for any kind of queries from the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries can contact the helpline and they will be connected to specialists for medical suggestions. 

The output of the campaign is twofold. First, 500 women with disabilities, and their family members will get to gain knowledge about menstrual hygiene which will allow them to take extra care during menstruation. The program will also help to reduce existing taboo and stigma related to menstruation. Moreover, if this endeavour is a success, BDDT will broaden its scope to organize other awareness programs and provide menstrual hygiene products in other regions of Bangladesh. Second, with the database, beneficiaries’ history can be shared to local clinics and specialists when they will need any kind of medical help regarding their menstrual health. This will allow the local medical centres and doctors to quickly know about a person’s medical history and will be in turn helpful for medical support. In the long run, the project will help to create a positive impact on the health and hygiene practices of woman with disabilities, both mentally and physically. Additionally, it will have a favourable societal influence to change people’s negative outlook and stigma about menstruation. 

Bangladesh Disabled Development Trust-BDDT is a non-profit and non-government organization-NGO in Bangladesh that has been working in line of its objective for developing the lives of vulnerable people e.g., Persons with Disabilities-PWDs specially for Visually Impaired Women by providing training, generating employment, promoting human rights and good governance, rehabilitation services, educational support, capacity development, Income Generating Activities-IGAs and emergency response during disasters. Our team lead himself comes from the Barguna district, where we wish to implement this program on SRHR. He has worked on root level regarding MHM issues in the area. We have an employee who is a visually impaired person and works closely with visually impaired girls. There are two female employees who are in charge of an accommodation facility of 10 visually impaired girls, run by BDDT. BDDT also provides menstrual support and MHM kits to these girls. So, the essence of these words is, BDDT has a team lead and a team who have sound knowledge about menstrual hygiene management and have experience of working with persons with disabilities. The whole team is considerate about the problematic issues and they also have experience of working in the rural areas of Bangladesh. Which is why, team BDDT has full confidence that they are well positioned to deliver this solution.

The number of participants who will be benefitted from the program will be approximately 500 young and adult women. The beneficiaries will be selected from the 4 upazilas (Barguna Sadar, Pathorghata, Bamna & Betagi) of Barguna district. 250 young and adult women with disabilities from each Upazilas will be selected. Their data will be collected by the data enumerators and preserved in database.