- Advertisement -
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 the reproductive health of women and girls.
Mrs Charity Gardiner, the Ahafo Regional Women’s Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who made the call said most people feel uncomfortable to talk about delicate issues on women and girls due to their religious and cultural orientations.
She emphasised that menstruation was not a taboo and that as a natural occurrence in adolescent girls and women, educators and stakeholder institutions must join hands to discuss it, to enhance the general wellbeing of women and girls.
The Women Organiser entreated 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, 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 a lot of girls go through challenges to have menstrual towels, quality detergent and toiletries during their monthly menstrual period.
She bemoaned how girls in rural areas used rags, tissue, clothes, cement sheets among other unhygienic and unsafe materials in their period due to financial constraints of their parents and guidance.
The Women’s Organiser emphasised that most girls from deprived homes ended up with pregnancies after they demanded money from men and boys to buy sanity towels for their monthly period.
The Women’s Organiser appealed to government to make sanitary towels very affordable through the removal of taxes on the product, providing incentives to towel producing companies and other internal interventions.
She solicited the support of individuals, groups, corporate executives, local and international Non – Governmental Organisations (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, among other individuals and groups for supporting the activities of the party’s women wing.
- Advertisement -
