Parents and guidance, teachers, media practitioners, religious leaders, and other stakeholder educators have been urged to come out boldly to discuss issues of menstruation and reproductive health of women and girls.
The Ahafo Regional Women’s Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mrs. Charity Gardiner, who made the call said that most people feel uncomfortable to talk about delicate issues on women and girls due to their religious and cultural orientations.
She emphasized that menstruation is not a taboo and that it is a natural occurrence in adolescent girls and women, and for that matter, educators and stakeholder institutions must join hands to discuss it to enhance the general wellbeing of women and girls.
The Women Organizer entreated all stakeholder educators to encourage these vulnerable women and girls to live confidently in their menstrual period and to erase all forms of myths and misconceptions about menstruation.
Mrs. Gardiner disclosed these on Friday when the Regional Women’s Wing of the NDC distributed about 2,500 pieces of menstrual towels to selected basic school girls across the Ahafo region, as part of this year’s World Menstrual Health (WMH) Day celebration.
The WMH Day which is commemorated on 28th May of every year, is a day set aside globally to create awareness on menstrual hygiene of women and girls especially those in rural communities, and this year was held on the theme,” Menstruation is Part of Life.”
According to available statistics, about 500 million women and girls across the world, particularly Africa, lack the access to quality, hygienic, medically approved, and very affordable sanitary towels.
Mrs. Charity Gardiner said that a lot of girls go through challenges to buy menstrual towels, quality detergent, and toiletries during their monthly menstrual period.
She bemoaned how girls in rural areas use rags, tissue, clothes, cement sheets, amongst other unhygienic and unsafe materials in their period due to financial constraints of their parents and guidance.
The Women’s Organizer stressed that most girls from deprived homes end up with pregnancies after they demand money from men and boys to buy sanity towels for their monthly period.
She is, therefore, appealing to the government to make sanitary towels very affordable by reducing taxes on these products, providing incentives to towel producing companies, and other internal interventions.
She solicited the support of individuals, groups, corporate executives, local, and international Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs), to partner their vision to provide quality sanitary towels to every girl in the Ahafo region.
Mrs. Gardiner expressed gratitude to the Members of Parliament (MPs) for Asutifi South and Asunafo South Constituencies, Alhaji Collins Dauda and Mr. Eric Opoku, Obuobia Darko Opoku, amongst other individuals and groups for supporting the activities of the party’s women wing.
