The World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Special Program on Human Reproduction (HRP) have taken steps to bring menstruation onto the global health agenda thanks to a strategic approach to building research that includes what adolescents want and need. need.
“Thanks to the dedicated and continued work of WHO and partners, this Menstrual Hygiene Day we are celebrating progress towards a health sector response that meets adolescents’ need for information and services,” said Dr Venkatraman Chandra Mouli, Scientist at HRP and WHO. . “WHO remains committed to supporting a strong health sector response to the broad issues that menstruation brings.”
Health commitments
Recently, in partnership with UNFPA, UNICEF, UNESCO, the Global Menstrual Health Collective and Columbia University, WHO and HRP made commitments to menstrual health THE Water Action Agenda at the UN Water Summit in March 2023 to advocate for countries to include promotive, preventive and curative health services, and access to adequate water supply and sanitation in their national universal health coverage policies and strategies.
This was a logical follow-up to the call to action and a commitment WHO and HRD made at the Human Rights Council in 2022: WHO statement on menstrual health and rights. A decade and a half of growing work on adolescent menstrual health provided the foundation and springboard for these engagements.
Learning from teenagers and broadening experiences
research shows that adolescent girls continue to be uninformed and unprepared about menstruation, with feelings of exclusion and shame leading to misunderstandings. This common lack of knowledge becomes a barrier to education and can negatively affect self-confidence and personal development. This understanding has led to a set of five action points for WHO’s work on menstrual health:
- Educate girls about menstruation.
- Create norms that view menstruation as healthy and positive.
- Improve access to sanitation products, running water, functional toilets and privacy.
- Improving care and support from girls’ families.
- Improve access to competent and caring health workers.
or research article review of progress made in low- and middle-income countries in the 25 years since the International Conference on Population and Development found that menstrual-related needs have been helped by girls and women sharing their experiences of persistent barriers with which are faced for the management of menstruation. In addition, ongoing work to reduce the gender gap, child marriage rates and reducing teenage pregnancy have all helped raise the profile of the importance of menstrual health.
Development of tools for health workers and caregivers
Responding to the needs and demands of adolescents, PBDN and WHO were developed desk reference tools for health workers to provide effective and empathetic care and support at the primary level to adolescents and their caregivers, answering questions about menstrual pain, irregularities and more.
In addition to the desk reference tools, HRP and WHO worked with United Nations partners to include a section on puberty education in International Technical Guide to Sexuality Education. This section (6.3) includes menstrual health education for all adolescents, communicating the key idea that menstruation is a normal and natural part of physical development and should not be treated with secrecy or stigma.
Landscape for the future
The call to use the term menstrual health, rather than menstrual hygiene, is the result of work with a wide range of partners committed to bringing menstrual health onto the global health agenda through a consistent, independent definition developed by the Terminology Action Group of the Global Menstrual Collective.
HRP and WHO also worked with partners on it review menstrual health status to chart the next ten years and what it will take to achieve the vision of health for all. The review covered the cross-cutting nature of menstrual health and demonstrated WHO’s role in strengthening the health sector response.
Finally, the provision of promotional, preventive and curative health services in WHO Universal Health Coverage Services Compendium fully leverages the momentum of the Universal Health Coverage movement to integrate menstrual health into the work of ministries of health.
Work to bring menstruation into sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender, education and humanitarian settings continues ahead of Menstrual Health Day (May 28) at the Africa Menstrual Health Symposium: Achieving Menstrual Justice through a Grassroots and Multisectoral Approach from 24 -May 25 organized by African Coalition for Menstrual Health Management.
