Shunned During Her Period, Nepali Woman Dies of Snakebite
By RAJNEESH BHANDARI and NIDA NAJARJULY 9, 2017
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Every month when her period came, Tulasi Shahi was sent to stay in her uncle’s hut,
the one where he keeps his cows tied up, in a village in the Dailekh district in western Nepal.
It’s all because the parents are illiterate." Radha Paudel, a Kathmandu-based women’s rights activist who focuses on menstrual health, said Nepal needed to enact legislation specifically outlawing the practice,
and to do a better job of spreading awareness of its dangers.
A Nepali government survey in 2010, cited in a State Department human rights report, found
that 19 percent of women in the country aged 15 to 49 practiced chhaupadi, and the proportion rose to 50 percent in the midwestern and far western regions.
Anita Gyawali, an official responsible for women’s issues in Dailekh, said
that another teenage girl died in the district about six weeks ago, also from a snakebite, while staying in a menstrual hut.
that If she was given proper treatment, she would have survived,
And a 15-year-old girl in another part of the country died in a menstrual shed in December; local news
reports said she was killed by smoke inhalation after lighting a fire in the hut to keep warm.