World Water Week has just come to a close, and though we weren’t able to attend in person, it was good to be able to participate online. Here we share some of the learning and our reflections from the Menstrual Health and Hygiene Sessions.
One of the sessions was about WASH and Menstrual Health for Girls’ Education and Sustainable Development.
Rick Johnston from the JMP took us through the WASH in Schools (WinS) report from June 2024, with had a special focus on Menstrual Hygiene.
He made the point that more and more data is being collected, and this is a good thing, allowing us to measure progress towards targets. Whilst all progress in basic WASH is good, progress is too slow in some nations. Unfortunately, it is evident that, globally, we are way off track to have 100% coverage of a basic service by 2030. Hygiene is a long way behind Water and Sanitation. And gender sensitive data, ie menstrual hygiene, is even further behind that. Nepal was one of the countries highlighted as making progress but it is far too slow.
Richard Dreibelbis from LSHTM talked about the difficulties of data collection for menstrual hygiene. As a concept it only entered the literature around 2010 and different researchers have used their own definitions and own indicators and outcomes. In a scoping review of all WASH in Schools (WinS) evidence, only 35% reported on gender disaggregated data and only 4% was fully disaggregated. There were too many indicators, and 144 distinct outcome measures across 14 domains. Even school absence was measured and defined in 5 different ways. We hold our hands up here, as being guilty of contributing to the lack of homogeneity!
Bethany Caruso from the MHH monitory group talked about the short list of indicators that were aligned to data the JMP was already collecting. They were published in 2022 and consist of 21 indicators over 7 domains. She made a plea for people working in the sphere to use the indicators, and build up the database. The more data, the more useful it will be to make comparisons, and set targets and measure progress.
An important point was made that although MHH is a young topic, we have reached the point now where Menstrual Health is an outcome in itself that doesn’t need to be justified in terms of education and productivity; it is valued in its own right.
Going forward, we look forward to incorporating the priority list of indicators into our work and contributing to the global efforts to bring educational, health and environmental equity to girls in LMIC.
Written by:
Josephine Mcallister