The number of women and girls facing period poverty in the UK has risen sharply during the coronavirus lockdown, according to charities working to help them.
Women unable to afford or access sanitary products have resorted to using items including newspaper, pillow cases, or tea towels.
One charity said the number of packs it gave out had risen about five-fold.
Poverty left some struggling to afford products while schools and community centres that normally distribute them have been shut.
The government said its scheme launched in January to give out free period products in schools was still in operation.
National charity Bloody Good Period said it usually distributed 5,000 packs a month but had handed more than 23,000 in the three months since lockdown began in England on 23 March.
“We have issued a letter of unconditional apology to the families of the dead. We are very hurt by this and we are very sorry. We condemn the way corpses have been treated. They should have been treated more humanely,” senior district official SS Nakula told BBC Hindi’s Imran Qureshi.
“They followed all the protocols. Where they have gone wrong is not the part of the protocol but the mentality that a dead body should be handled with dignity,” he added.
He said that the men in the video had been removed, adding that they would be replaced by a new team who would dispose of bodies “with sensitivity”.
There has been a lot of fear and stigma surrounding Covid-19 in India. People who contract the illness are stigmatised and shunned, while their bodies are often disposed of as health workers are afraid to touch them.
With almost 600,000 confirmed cases, India has the fourth-highest number of Covid infections in the world.
BBC
