As I entered the training place with a big bright smile along with my WAWCAS diary, I was very much excited to learn with Ram Maya. She started the session with warm welcome. She began the session by asking us what we understood when we heard the word “Sanitation”. We all looked at each other’s faces with confusion. Nobody exactly knew what sanitation meant. Ram Maya explained that sanitation is the effective use of tools and actions that keep our environment healthy. These includes sanitation in food preparation, washing stations, latrines or toilets to manage wastes, effective drainage and other such mechanisms. In simple words, it is the process of keeping places clean and healthy for better health a prevention of diseases.
Hygiene is a set of personal practices that contribute to good health. It includes activities like washing hands before and after eating food and in general also, bathing, trimming hair and nails in regular basis. Washing hands is the single most important activity that we can encourage all to do in order prevent diseases. She specifically focused on the health and hygiene of women. She said that we as women need to be more careful during our menstrual cycle. When she started talking about menstrual cycle, we got little uncomfortable as these topics are not openly discussed in our society. But she told that menstrual period should not be considered as taboo as it is a natural process and should be openly discussed. She gave us the statistics that many women annually suffer from various diseases because of carelessness, ignorance and unhygienic behavior during menstrual cycles. Therefore, it is very important to be clean and hygienic by using sanitary pad during the time of menstrual periods. If it is not possible to afford sanitary pad, cotton pad can also be used but it should be cleaned very properly and dried in proper sunlight for next use. When we were asked how many of us uses sanitary pads during menstrual cycles, nobody raised the hand. After knowing the importance of sanitation and hygiene, I have committed to myself that I will buy sanitary pad to my daughter so that she can use it during her menstrual cycles and be healthy and clean.
Another important message was that about brushing the teeth at least twice a day after meal. We only brush our teeth in the morning but that is not enough. When we don’t brush our teeth at night after dinner, the germs get the chance to decay our teeth in the night and the teeth’s condition will be worst. Hence, I promised to myself that along with me, I will explain and make all my family members to brush their teeth twice a day.
This IBT training is very meaningful as it helped us to improve the quality of our day to day life. The knowledge gained here was really eye opening to all of us.