Crouched inside her makeshift tent at a camp in Rafah, Samah El-Nazli fidgets as she recalls what her living conditions have been like since the war began. The mother of four is among millions of Gazans struggling to access food, water and sanitation in the overcrowded camp after losing their own homes in the strip.
“There’s no way to keep clean, there’s no way to be comfortable — we’re living a completely destroyed life,” she said.
Many women and girls living in the strip have opted to start taking birth control as a way to stop their periods as the conflict nears its eighth month.
El-Nazli, 34, said she tried everything to manage her cycle — from adult diapers to dirty cloth — before seeking out medication to stop her period altogether.
“None of these things are good,” she said in an interview while she reorganized the pots and pans lining the nylon walls of her tent.
With the current hormone mixtures most oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) have a woman has a period every month (during the 7 days she either takes no pills or takes placebos) to shed the uterine lining.
There are newer OCPs and devices, called continuous-use birth control, that women can take for 84 days - 1 year (or 2 yrs for an IUD or vaginal ring, or indefinitely for a Depo-Provera injection - with the caveat that a woman may never have a period again) before stopping for one week to shed the uterine lining.
Because these are fairly new to the market there is zero longitudinal data on the safety of these products. And as stated above, long-term use can result in never having a period again, ie: never being able to conceive.