Shunned During Her Period, Nepali Woman Dies of Snakebite<br />By RAJNEESH BHANDARI and NIDA NAJARJULY 9, 2017<br />KATHMANDU, Nepal — Every month when her period came, Tulasi Shahi was sent to stay in her uncle’s hut,<br />the one where he keeps his cows tied up, in a village in the Dailekh district in western Nepal.<br />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,<br />and to do a better job of spreading awareness of its dangers.<br />A Nepali government survey in 2010, cited in a State Department human rights report, found<br />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.<br />Anita Gyawali, an official responsible for women’s issues in Dailekh, said<br />that another teenage girl died in the district about six weeks ago, also from a snakebite, while staying in a menstrual hut.<br />that If she was given proper treatment, she would have survived,<br />And a 15-year-old girl in another part of the country died in a menstrual shed in December; local news<br />reports said she was killed by smoke inhalation after lighting a fire in the hut to keep warm.
