Expert opinion: Heavy periods can kill and should be treated as a global health priority

Posted on 15 May 2023 by Chloe Ratcliffe

Teacher Fedila Beyan demonstrates how to properly wear sanitary pads to adolescent girls in Serkema Primary school, Serkema village, Kombolcha woreda, Oromia region of Ethiopia, in March 2022. Heavy menstrual bleeding is killing women, but it is not being treated as a global health priority. — Copyright: Nahom Tesfaye / UNICEF Ethiopia, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, highlights the need to treat heavy menstrual bleeding as a global health priority in a comment piece for SciDev. The article explains how heavy periods can cause anaemia which in turn increases the risk of severe bleeding after childbirth.