Period poverty and mental health of menstruators during COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons and implications for the future

Menstruation is a naturally occurring phenomenon;however, millions of adolescent girls and women, as well as nonbinary persons who bleed every month, are deprived of menstruating safely and respectfully. Those belonging to marginalized sections face the brunt of lack of access to water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities;affordable menstrual supplies;and inequitable distribution of menstrual health education and are victims of period poverty. Their preexisting suffering was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which negatively affected the mental health of those menstruating. Adolescent girls and women in communities found it persistently challenging to access and afford menstrual products while deprived of menstrual hygiene education. These put them under immense stress and elevated financial liability, predisposing them to period poverty. Interventions addressing period poverty rely on mustering collective community voices and deploying adequate policy tools. All the efforts and solutions must provide social and financial protection nets and psychological aid through mental health support groups. It is core to drive menstrual health equity for all menstruators, irrespective of who they are, what they do, and where they live.

Recommendations for maternal mental health policy in India.

Mental illnesses are a serious concern in India where every seventh person suffers from mental health problems-with women more affected than men. While the burden of perinatal mental illnesses grows, India lacks exclusive policies to address it. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on routine antenatal care and institutional deliveries and has also affected the mental health of pregnant women and mothers. We evaluated existing policies. Policy options were evaluated against criteria like cost-benefit analysis, administrative feasibility, human resources, and equity along with the intended and unintended consequences. We propose three policy options: (1) strengthening and focused implementation of the existing national mental health program (NMHP), (2) integrating mental health in the ongoing Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health Program, and (3) including a 'maternal' component in NMHP. We offered policy recommendations to fill the gap in addressing the maternal mental health challenge in India.

Telemedicine during COVID-19 in India-a new policy and its challenges.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a countrywide lockdown of nearly twelve weeks in India reduced access to regular healthcare services. As a policy response, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare which exercises jurisdiction over telemedicine in India, rapidly issued India's first guidelines for use of telemedicine. The authors argue that: guidelines must be expanded to address ethical concerns about the use of privacy, patient data and its storage; limited access to the internet and weaknesses in the telecom infrastructure challenge widespread adoption of telemedicine; only by simultaneously improving both will use of telemedicine become equitable; Indian medical education curricula should include telemedicine and India should rapidly extend training to practitioner. They determine that for low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), including India, positive externalities of investing in telemedicine are ample, thus use of this option can render healthcare more accessible and equitable in future.

Moral philosophy, pragmatism, and the larger cause: why "war" metaphors are needed during pandemics.

Coronavirus disease (Covid-19), which originated in China, is now a full-blown pandemic which has thrown governments and societies off-track in an unprecedented manner. War metaphors have been used widely to describe the scenario, but many critics decry them as harmful narratives. In this piece, we discuss the utility of the war metaphor to build solidarity and fraternity, which will be essential to get through the crisis. We also explain how concerns regarding increased authoritarianism and state excesses due to the use of these narratives are misplaced. We then tease out the colonial era concept of war that guides the arguments against the use of war metaphors in pandemics. We argue that in the post-modern world and in South Asian and African philosophies, wars are seen through the prism of the larger cause of dharma or ubuntu and that individual losses or gains in these contexts are part of a larger cause. The use of war metaphors reflects the need to get together for a societal cause. These metaphors are largely understood across societies while other alternatives are exclusionary, poetic and tangential in nature.

Keywords : Covid-19, pandemics, war metaphors, communication, philosophy, SARS-CoV-2

.