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According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), India is the only large country in the world where more baby girls die than baby boys. Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) of the Government of India says that girls are often subjected to paramount inequalities and patriarchal discrimination and the struggle for her, begins even before the day she is conceived. In an effort to raise awareness on this issue, in 2008, MWCD started celebrating the National Girl Child day each year on January 24. On this National Girl Child Day, we speak with Dr S Shantha Kumari, President, Federation of Obstetricians and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI) about how violence against girl child can affect her health and wellbeing.
While talking about the kind of violence that girls can face, Dr Kumari said that any behaviour that affects a girl’s psychological, physical and sexual health, is what is called violence against her. She added,
Violence negatively affects a girl’s health- both physical and mental. Unfortunately, girls are subjected to violence right from the pre-birth phase. Be it the sex-selective abortion, infanticide or battering of a pregnant woman because she may be having a girl child and even when the girl child is growing up, we find events of incest and physical violence against the girl child. Now a day we even see a lot of cyber violence. When she grows up to be a woman, she is subjected to domestic violence, intimate partner violence and all sorts of sexual violence like forced pregnancies, forced abortions.
Dr Kumari added that violence against women contributes to maternal morbidity and mortality. She asserted that in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality and other goals like ending poverty, ending malnutrition, among others, the incidences of violence against girls and women must be reduced.
For raising awareness about the violence faced by girls and women, Dr Kumar started an initiative called Dheera in 2016. She talked about the importance of sensitising Obstetricians and Gynecologist on the violence faced by women as they are the first point of contact for females.
Read more- https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/on-this-national-girl-child-day-2022-say-no-to-violence-against-girls-66185/amp/