SDG 3- Good Health and Well-Being- An Overview

Tanuja Nailwal is a second year engineering student at JIIT, Noida. She loves meeting new people and her love for food is infinite. This avid debater loves to be around kids and is striving hard to leave her footprints on this Earth. She wants the world around everyone to be beautiful and she tries doing that by her writings.

SDG -3- Good Health and Well-Being For All- An Overview

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality. However, many more efforts are needed to fully eradicate a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues. The highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental right of every person. Gender-based discrimination, however, undercuts this right. It can render women more susceptible to sickness and less likely to obtain care, for reasons ranging from affordability to social conventions keeping them at home. The statistics are pretty cringe-worthy but, on the whole, we are making positive progress, considering the global health situation some decades back. Progress towards achieving this Sustainable Development Goal should be handled with the seriousness it calls for because it’s at the centre of whether or not we are going to achieve the rest of the goals.

CHAT1 :
Bhani Rachel Bali (@KashmiriKudi) curated our twitter handle in the first week of September about Mental health with regard to SDG-3. The discussion revolved around concerns of the women about mental health and associated stigma.

Key points that were discussed are as follows:

• Inadequacy of mental health facilities in India.
• How society shrugs off talking about mental illness and thus cases go unreported
• The way in which women are alienated from society, even by families
• How rural India is still way behind when it comes to medical facilities to coping up with mental illness
• Challenges in the implementation of India’s new mental health bill were also discussed
• How the term mental illness is unclear among masses
• How both the genders are the target of this stigma
• How the dominant history of patriarchy makes the situation tough for women
• How a non-alignment with standard feminine standards is termed as mental illness by society
• Whether disorders are gendered or not
• Why mental illness cases worsen over the time
• Barriers for tackling the problem of mental illness
• Why we need healers along with doctors
• Why awareness is important 
• How technology can break distance barriers if operated ethically

CHAT 2:

Naina Jha, @27nainajha curated our account during the third week of September and hosted a TweetChat about reproductive mental health. This tweet chat brought light to many unreported and unnoticed problems of women.

• What is pregnancy depression
• What  is post-natal depression and how it  is overlooked
• How surroundings and family support can help in keeping pregnancy issues at bay
• How depression is not even considered a health issue even among educated people
• How societal stigma and expectations affect women during pregnancy
• Situations when women have to undergo pregnancy because of family pressure
• Why the picture of an ideal mother haunts women during this beautiful phase
• Marital rapes leading to pregnancy is an ignored reason
• Why spouses should cooperate with their wives
• Why women should express their problems and not shy away

CHAT 3:

Laurette Cucuzza, @LauretteCucuzza curated the account during the fourth week of September and discussed the importance of good health and well-being for the empowerment of adolescent girls. Different aspects related to the well-being of adolescent girls were discussed.

• Perception of empowerment of girls in terms of their health and well-being 
• Ways to help girls in making informed decisions about their health
• How conversations around the topics which are overlooked is important
• Why both genders must stop stereotyping each other
• Why is there shyness about discussing important issues which might affect girls’ health?
• How parents should deal with their daughters and tell her the difference between right and wrong
• How open dialogue about health issues can create an enabling environment
• No distinction between boys and girls for medical facilities can ensure proper healthcare