Sanitary Pads: necessity or a luxury?

The floods this year have affected more than half of Pakistan and according to stats, it is worse than that in 2010. During this hard time, a lot of citizens and celebrities are moving forward and doing their best to collect donations and help the flood victims.

  

They are collecting dry food items, clothes, dry milk, biscuits, and everything which will cover their nutritional requirements. They are also distributing sanitary pads for the women as it comes under basic necessity but our Twitter audience has other opinions and they can’t go low than this. They need to be educated and our women are performing the duty. 

  

But the fact that we have to tell them how it's a basic necessity says a lot about how men don't realise what women go through. How the absence of pads would affect the health of a woman, in such unsanitary conditions that are related to flood? It would add to the health burden and they're the ones going through something that's not in their control. 

  

Our so-called patriarchal society is asking them to use clothes, what clothes do they want them to be using? The already limited ones that they're wearing?! Because they lost everything in the cruel flood. 

  
Considering periods don't stop and are messy, the mobility of women will be affected, not to mention the taboo associated with it, if she bleeds through the cloth, it will cause her mental distress and weird disgusted looks from the same men who think women have an agenda with sanitary pads. UTIs, TSS, all of these can happen due to unsanitary made-up pads. 

  

So, when we’re donating items, we should keep the sanitary pads also in mind as they are a complete necessity as women and little girls don’t stop bleeding during natural calamities and are most vulnerable.