May 28th will mark Menstrual Hygiene Day, our second year into the pandemic

As I was scrolling down the messages on a family WhatsApp group, I saw that my cousin, a well-educated woman in her 30s had emphatically shared a post claiming that women should not take the COVID-19 vaccine within five days of their periods, owing to low immunity during this time. I laughed it off, only to see the same message being shared all over Facebook and Instagram, and to my surprise, by educated women!

What I had laughed off as just another WhatsApp forward gradually started to make me frustrated and almost angry at the ignorance of our urban population. The government and the Press Information Bureau were quick to quash these rumours in their tweets, but I couldn’t shake off the ubiquity of misinformation, false beliefs and erroneous narratives around menstruation.

#Fake post circulating on social media claims that women should not take #COVID19Vaccine 5 days before and after their menstrual cycle.

Don’t fall for rumours!

All people above 18 should get vaccinated after May 1. Registration starts on April 28 on https://t.co/61Oox5pH7x pic.twitter.com/JMxoxnEFsy

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) April 24, 2021

As we approach Global Menstruation Day on 28th May, it has been over a year of the pandemic, and over a year since all public health awareness activities at the grassroots have been stalled. What effect will the pandemic have had on all the progress we have made so far?

In my professional life, I have had the opportunity to work on issues pertaining to menstrual hygiene in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India.

Travelling extensively across rural and semi-urban centres in the state, I worked with students, officers, ASHA (Health) workers and communities at large, sensitizing them on the myths, taboos and beliefs around menstruation. In these sessions, we urged participants to be more vocal about issues pertaining to menstruation, and spread awareness on health and hygiene best practices for women.

And what an experience it was! Everyone was forthcoming. Everyone talked about their periods openly. We even had instances of entire villages condemning taboos around worship during menstruation.

Male professors and teachers emerged as heroes, as they distributed sanitary pads to girls in schools. I still remember meeting ‘Padwaale Bhaiya’, as he was fondly called by the girls in the village, long before the film ‘Padman’ became popular. ‘Padwaale Bhaiya’ would spread awareness about menstrual hygiene. He would urge schools to install incinerators, and educate the community on the importance of nutrition during menstruation.

There were so many women and men, girls and boys who came forward, broke the silence around menstruation and brought about a transformation in their own communities by building toilets, spreading awareness about supplementation, educating people about taboos that have always been associated with menstruation in many Indian communities.

Periods don’t stop during pandemics. But our field work and our interaction with the community did come to a standstill.

As I sit indoors in my urban oasis, I wonder what’s going on in rural India, in communities where the only way of getting a sanitary pad was from either their schools or community health centers.

Women in the biggest cities had difficulty accessing menstrual supplies when India first went into lockdown. What is the state of women in communities that already had scarce access?

What about misinformation preventing women on their periods from taking vaccines? If us, educated women are falling prey, what about the rest of us?

Menstrual Hygiene Day has been an occasion to discuss the most natural biological process that women go through. In 2020, the focus was on “Periods in Pandemic”. As India reels under the pressure of the second wave, I hope the dialogue on healthy and hygienic menstruation doesn’t get buried. It mustn’t, if we want to achieve a world where no woman is being held back because of her periods.