The Menstrual Hygiene Programme was being implemented in the State for adolescent girls in rural areas. It was then extended to cover postnatal mothers in government hospitals, women prisoners and female in-patients of Institute of Mental Health, Chennai.
According to a Government Order dated December 9, the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine sent a proposal for extension of the programme to urban areas and scaling up to cover women in-patients in 781government medical institutions.
As per the proposal, sanitary napkins will be procured for adolescent girls in the age group of 10 to 19 years in urban areas at a cost of ₹34.74 crore, and for women in-patients in government hospitals including 24 medical college hospitals, 31 district headquarters hospitals and 271 sub-district hospitals at a cost of ₹9.41 crore through the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation.
Following this, the government approved the extension of the scheme to adolescent girls in urban areas and women in-patients in the reproductive age group of 15 to 49 years at a cost of ₹44.15 crore.
The sanitary napkins will be delivered directly to government schools for the adolescent girls. The urban health nurse will go to ICDS centre on every Saturday, and along with the anganwadi workers, they will distribute to girls who are not covered in government and government aided schools.
