Health & Fitness
Delhi’s first ‘Pad Yatra’ busts stigma around menstruation

On a sunny February morning, sitting amid thousands of students at Central Park in Connaught Place, 15-year-old Priya Kumari pledged to never use euphemisms for menstruation. The class 8 student at a government school in Vasundhra Enclave has always been told to refer to her menstrual cycle as “them” or “those” because of the perceived stigma surrounding it.
On Tuesday, after participating in Delhi’s first “period fest” or “Pad Yatra”, she realised she did not have to be ashamed about her monthly cycle. “My mother always asked me to use “code words” for my period as she thinks it’s a matter of shame. I have never understood her logic. Today, after attending this huge gathering celebrating menstruation, I have understood that we should not be ashamed of telling people when we are on our monthly cycle. It’s a part of our life and we should discuss it to bust myths surrounding it,” she said.
Sitting next to her was Raj Lakshmi, 13, a class 7 student of another government school in east Delhi. She said, “People consider menstruation a “ghost”. I have heard my grandmother saying that girls are “impure” when they are on their period. We need to change this mindset.”
Around 3,000 students from 50 government and five private schools in the city participated in the “period fest” organised by NGO Sachhi Saheli, in association with the Delhi government. The students performed street plays and dramas to sensitise people. Students also took out a “pad yatra” carrying pad-shaped placards and banners with messages like “She’s never gonna whisper about her periods”.
“It is only with hesitation that one starts a discussion about menstrual cycle, if at all. So, it is important to remember that as girls and women, we should never be ashamed of our period — instead we should be proud,” Dr Surbhi Singh, founder of Sachhi Saheli and a gynecologist, said.
Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia, who was the chief guest at the event, urged students to become “ambassadors” to spread awareness about menstruation. “I urge each one of you to become brand ambassadors of this message to eradicate shame and the silence surrounding periods,” he said.
A “pad zone” was also set up to make visitors, especially boys and men, aware about the “period management options”. “I did not know the harms of using a cloth during menstruation. Today, I got to know of it through a street play,” Sudhandhu Kumar, a class 9 student of Amity International School, Noida, said.
Explaining the idea behind choosing February 5 to celebrate “menstrual health”, Ritika of Sachhi Saheli said, “We chose February because it has 28 days just like our period cycle and we picked 5 as the date because, normally, our period last for five days,” she said. The NGO, along with the Delhi government, has announced it will organise the fest every year on the same date.
Entertainment
Munmun Dutta shares transformation photos, says she is ‘feeling the change’
Munmun Dutta who is most popular for portraying the part of Babita iyer in TMKOC has taken instagram to share her change pictures.
She shared a split of two photographs showing the distinction in her look prior to going through the program, and after it. She wrote in the subtitle that the interaction is as yet in progress and she is anticipating her wellness venture.
View this post on Instagram
Munmun in her caption wrote, “Great part was, at long last after not turning out for right around 4 months, I got once more into the propensity for working out routinely once more. Long approach to accomplish the god-like physique however I am on target and persuaded to do as such. It will be an excursion and I am anticipating it.”
As of late, Munmun had purchased another level in Mumbai and shared photographs of it via online media. She said that purchasing the new house was a “little glimpse of heaven” second for her.
Health & Fitness
Life expectancy in India drops by 2 years due to Covid pandemic: Report

A statistical analysis conducted by Mumbai’s International Institute for Population Studies shows that life expectancy in India has dropped by roughly two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.
According to IIPS assistant professor Surayakant Yadav, the life expectancy at birth for men and women has declined from 69.5 years and 72 years in 2019 to 67.5 years and 69.8 respectively in 2020, reports Times of India.
‘Life expectancy at birth’ is defined as the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live if the mortality pattern during their birth remains constant in the future.
The study was conducted to analyse the effect of the Covid pandemic on the mortality patterns across the country, as thousands of lives were lost due to the deadly pandemic waves.
The study also found out that the Covid toll was reported to be the highest for men in the age group of 35-69. The excess deaths in this age bracket due to Covid led to a sharp drop in life expectancy.
The IIPS based its study on the data collected by the 145-nation Global Burden of Disease study and the Covid-India Application Programme Interface (API) portal.
Yadav further added, “The Covid impact has wiped out the progress we made in the last decade to increase the life expectancy figure. India’s life expectancy at birth now is the same as it was in 2010. It will take us years to catch up.”
However, IIPS director Dr K S James added that epidemics in the past in countries, including Africa, massively impacted life expectancy, but it recouped in a few years.
Source : IndiaToday
Health & Fitness
3rd Covid Wave Unlikely To Mirror Devastating 2nd Wave: Top Medical Body

Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
New Delhi: A potential third wave of Covid infections seems unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, says a modelling study by a team of scientists from the Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Imperial College London, UK. Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
India’s first wave of SARSCoV-2 infection began in late January 2020 with a peak attained in mid-September. This phase was relatively mild compared to the second wave that followed, from mid-February 2021 onwards, exhibiting a more explosive spread across the country. A major factor driving this second wave is the emergence of more-infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2, principally B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant) and B.1.617.2 (Delta variant), of which the latter has played a dominant role in recent months.
Third waves have emerged in other countries – like the UK and the USA – and are driven by a range of factors, says the study.
The results suggest that a third wave, if it should occur, is unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, given the extent of spread that has already taken place in India, it adds.
“Consequently, for a virus to cause a major third wave in the face of this pre-existing immunity, extreme scenarios for the abrogation of that immunity are required, or for that matter, for the transmission fitness of any novel virus,” says the article in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
For the wave to be as devastating, at least 30 per cent of the population who had been infected earlier must entirely lose their immunity, or an emerging variant of the virus must have a reproductive rate (R) over 4.5, that is, each infected person should be spreading to at least 4-5 others and these must occur almost immediately after the second wave ends, according to the study.
The emergence of a third wave in India could be substantially mitigated by the expansion of vaccination, says the study, adding the rollout of vaccine should be in such a way as to cover 40 per cent of the population with two doses over a period of three months following the end of the second wave, which is on the decline currently.
Crowding, use of mask and physical distancing during social interactions are all key factors shaping transmission rate and therefore population-level spread, the study cautions.
“Lockdown-release mechanisms could be a plausible driver for a third wave in India, depending on how effectively lockdowns have controlled transmission during the second wave particularly when instated at an early stage of the second wave and prior to attainment of peak,” says the study.
The analysis, says scientists, is intended to be illustrative and not predictive.
“In the present approach, we considered essentially a uniform waning rate over the spectrum of severity. Second, the basic reproduction number (equivalently, the rate-of-transmission) was assumed to remain constant during each wave,” said the scientists explaining the methodology used in the study.
Source : NDTV
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