Periods are a nightmare in Gaza's crowded, unsanitary camps. Women are using birth control to skip them
Periods are a nightmare in Gaza's crowded, unsanitary camps. Women are using birth control to skip them
Crouched inside her makeshift tent at a camp in Rafah, Samah El-Nazli fidgets as she recalls what her living conditions have been like since the war began. The mother of four is among millions of Gazans struggling to access food, water and sanitation in the overcrowded camp after losing their own homes in the strip.
"There's no way to keep clean, there's no way to be comfortable — we're living a completely destroyed life," she said.
Many women and girls living in the strip have opted to start taking birth control as a way to stop their periods as the conflict nears its eighth month.
El-Nazli, 34, said she tried everything to manage her cycle — from adult diapers to dirty cloth — before seeking out medication to stop her period altogether.
"None of these things are good," she said in an interview while she reorganized the pots and pans lining the nylon walls of her tent.
Not even women's sanitary products get to the refugees through Israel's blockade apparently.
Hey - who knows what explosives they might be smuggling in their underwear! /s
It should be clear to everyone that the IDF just wants to starve out civilians and I am baffled by anyone who still thinks they're working in good faith.
If you're bombing civilians and blockading aid and starving the country, why would that be what you let through?
How do birth control pills get in but not tampons? And wouldn't women all over the world prefer to get rid of their periods entirely? From what I've heard, they verge from the uncomfortable to the painful.
We cannot take birth control pills indefinitely. Each pack of pills only has 21 days of active drugs in them (some packets have 28 days of pills, but 7 are placebos -- this is for those of us who forget to take pills sometimes).
This is only a short-term solution meant to help the women for a few months at most.
The IDF ‘maintains’ a list of banned “dual use” items that while definitely helpful to civilians, if it can potentially-maybe-kinda be of any use to a militant? Banned.
The list is absurd and goes beyond understandable items like binoculars or bubble levels, and bans dumb things like scissors, tourniquets, or tampons. If some witless IDF inspector can think of a potential use, it’s banned. The whole truck gets turned around.
They rejected an aid shipment at least once because it was on the wrong size pallet.