Right to Safe Birth and Hygiene tools for Women in India
Right to Safe Birth and Hygiene tools for Women in India
In India, women, especially schoolgirls, face the overwhelming task of maintaining their health. An approximate 355 million Indian women and girls need to find ways to deal with hygiene practices on a monthly basis. Most of these women either do not have access to toilets or face unhygienic lavatory installations.
One of the most important, but ignored, health problems in the developing world is menstrual hygiene. In India, poor menstrual hygiene causes approximately 70 per cent of all reproductive diseases. 89 percent of the rural population of the nation lives in households that lack toilets, according to India's 2011 census. This lack of proper sanitation poses challenges to public health and affects India.
Additionally, Low birth weight (LBW), preterm births, birth asphyxia and infection or sepsis are the principal reasons behind this sprouting pattern. Village women are not properly mindful of personal hygiene, maternal and newborn treatment. The socio-economic and cultural norms in the village are becoming an obstacle to women receiving access to health care services.
Thousands of girls, mostly belonging to socially and economically disadvantaged societies, have an unrealized need for programs and interventions on sexual and reproductive health (SRH). It impacts their well-being and quality of life in a major way. Many of these girls are forced into early marriage, leading to early pregnancy, causing them to drop out of school and abandon any higher education ambitions.
In India, a majority of rural women use clothes and hankies for feminine hygiene. These materials can predispose women to infections of the reproductive tract as it may be difficult for them to keep clean and free of harmful bacteria in their used napkins. Due to lack of water, private facilities, and cultural taboo, washing reusable feminine products with soap and drying them in sunlight may be difficult.
Similarly, in cases of pregnancy, where adequate diet, adequate rest and care are important to a mother and child's healthy development, there are different myths that revolve around receiving proper care during pregnancy. If the baby weighs more than the set standard, then it becomes difficult for the mother to deliver the infant, thereby complicating her condition during childbirth, one such myth that exists. Such myths do not encourage women to have a proper and balanced diet. Even after childbirth, the condition remains the same as women are not given sufficient diets and are forced to resume their household responsibilities. In general, women are deprived of proper nutrition and engaged in household chores.
On top of it, inadequate facilities of childbirth in remote villages and the practices of delivering a child at home, where in most cases is particularly not hygienic, the threat of infections and other diseases make the infant and mother vulnerable.
Although commercially accessible sanitary napkins offer a potential alternative, this choice can be afforded by only 12 percent of Indian women. As economic status still has a significant role to play, discrimination does not stop here. Gender inequality is a serious problem, but so is the economic gap between women.
Although, on the one hand, women of the elite class have the ease of delivering their sanitary items to their doorsteps or accessing the childbirth and hygienic lavatory services, while, on the other hand, the poor and downtrodden continue to struggle to make their ends meet when it comes to basic sanitation practices. The gender and economic divide has led to a lack of access to education for women, especially those from marginalised or rural communities.
Two resolutions, one in 2010 and the other in 2015, which acknowledged human rights to sanitation and clean water, were adopted by the UN General Assembly. In particular, the 2015 resolution pressed on sanitation and called on states to ensure the proportionate involvement of women in decision-making on sanitation management and practises.
Since 2010, numerous government and foreign assistance programmes have intensified the shift in key healthcare areas. Which involves furnishing more up-to-date services for community health centres as well as smaller, local clinics and offering more formal training for healthcare staff. This encourages staff to have all of the skills they need to be able to have a real effect on what they need.
With the Swachh Bharat movement, lavatories have been established at several locations and aids while creating awareness for constructing toilets in house campuses in villages have been initiated.
Apart from this, there are several laws and rules that protect the pregnant women whilst also creating awareness. The scheme known as Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram has following benefits primarily focusing on marginalised section of society:
- In order to receive maternity care, women do not need to pay anything. Even the delivery by caesarean section is free, as is the supply of blood if necessary.
- After they have delivered babies in government health facilities and some private hospitals, women (from BPL families and SC/STs) are actually entitled to cash payment.
- What's even better is that free transportation, along with food for the duration of the hospital stay, is available to the hospital and back.
- Sick children are entitled to free care, free medications, free diagnostics and travel from home to health facilities, between facilities in the event of referral, as well as a free return home after one year of age for your newborn.
- Women are eligible to receive Rs. 6,000 in cash payment for routine prenatal checkup, institutional delivery, and vaccination of children in certain districts.
- Private sector employed women are entitled to 6 months of maternity leave for female workers.
- Under the Maternity Benefit Act, being dismissed from a job on account of pregnancy is illegal. The government could soon enforce a provision banning the sacking of any woman during pregnancy, on any excuse, to plug any loophole and ensure protection for female workers.
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