Menstrual hygiene management vital to protecting environment

The Registrar of Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON), Dr Dominic Abonyi, has disclosed that menstrual hygiene management is very vital to protecting the environment. Abonyi said good menstrual hygiene management has two broad implications such as personal hygiene and environmental sanitation.

He stated this in Abuja at an event to mark this year’s World Menstrual Hygiene Day in collaboration with the Department of Pollution Control and Environmental Health, Federal Ministry of Environment and Grassroots Environmental Healthcare Initiative (GEHI) with the theme, ‘No More Limit’.

He stated that menstrual hygiene management was not scientific enough until the development of safe science menstrual hygiene management that resolved problem as recent materials used in menstrual hygiene defied environmental decay.

“They may not classically be called plastics but they belong to the class of recalcitrant materials that refuse to leave the environment,” he said.

According to him, World Menstrual Hygiene Day, embraced by which the entire population in the health and environment sector to raise awareness especially on the need for good menstrual hygiene management.

In his remark, the director, Pollution Control and Environmental Health, at the Federal Ministry of Environment, Charles Ikeah, said menstrual hygiene management is fundamental to protecting the environment, as it will prevent the indiscriminate disposal of menstrual wastes, reduce environmental pollution and degradation associated with these wastes and prevent the attendant effects on health and the national economy.