Reproductive health needs of women and girls in natural disasters: a systematic review

Natural disasters are one of the crises which are increasing all around the world. The effect of these disasters is more intense on adult girls and women than other groups of the society. Reproductive health needs of women and adult girls are one of the important issues at the time of natural disasters, which needs special attention. Although more attention has been paid to this issue, the reproductive health needs of this group are still neglected. The present review study was performed with aim to evaluate the effect of natural disasters on the reproductive health needs of women and girls of reproductive age.

In this systematic review, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane Library databases were searched between 2011 and 2023 using MESH keywords including Natural disaster, Reproductive Health, Women and Girl. The quality of the studies was assessed by the checklists of STROBE and Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), and finally, ten eligible studies were used for analysis.

Women and girls face many problems related to reproductive health during natural disasters. Reproductive health needs of women and girls during natural disasters include needs related to mother and child health, menstrual and genital health, early puberty and access to reproductive health services.

The occurrence of natural disasters such as floods, flash floods and earthquakes leads to ignorance of reproductive health requirements of women and girls. Therefore, they may face many problems in these conditions. Hence, it is recommended to provide necessary infrastructures and trainings in order to prepare for possible natural disasters.