“Pad a girl” campaign
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has introduced a scheme for promotion of menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls in the age group of 10-19 years in rural areas. The objective of this mission is to spread awareness among adolescent girls on menstrual hygiene, to increase access to and use of high quality sanitary napkins especially in rural area, and to ensure safe disposal of Sanitary Napkins in an environmentally friendly manner. Almost 23 million girls in India drop out of school annually because of the lack of menstrual hygiene management facilities, including the availability of sanitary napkins and awareness about mensuration. The social taboo associated with it has to go with changing times. It’s a universal women’s biology and humans take birth from women only. Hence the birth giver’s menstrual health and hygiene have to be taken seriously and scientific solutions be implemented.
To address these stigmas and discuss the possible health issues, Schwabe India has taken an initiative and launched the “Pad a Girl” initiative in different localities & higher secondary schools. The objective is to spread awareness about mensuration and menstrual hygiene in poor patients through local doctors in the interiors. Here Schwabe India provides a pack of 6 sanitary pads to each girl attending the campaign with the support of a health care proffesional, followed by discussion on healthy menstrual guidelines.. Till now we have distributed appox. 2.5 lakh sanatry pads and we have pledged to distribute 6 lakhs pads to the needy women.