Tema — A total of 2,000 adolescent school girls in Greater Accra have been provided with free sanitary pads by Share Foundation and Rymas International, both NGOs, to help them manage their menstrual hygiene properly
The adolescent girls were selected from 25 Basic Schools predominantly at Tema, Tetteh Ocloo School for the Deaf at Ashaiman and Seventh Day Adventist School at Nungua.
The founder of Share Foundation, Lilly Mintah, said challenges of adolescent reproductive health could impact negatively on school attendance and academic performance due to the inability of the teenagers to manage their menstruation properly.
She explained that the distribution was in consequence to the lack of access to sanitary pads mainly due to the price hikes in the products which some of the school girls could not afford.
Ms Mintah said she was passionate about adolescent reproductive health, adding that some of the young girls fell prey to unscrupulous men and got pregnant because they had to depend on them to provide money to buy the pads.
At the Tema Metropolitan Assembly I (TMA I), Basic school where the exercise was climaxed, Girl Child Coordinator of the school, Mavis Hammond, said the inability of some of the girls to manage their menstruation well resulted in absenteeism and by large, dropping out of school.
Ms Hammond recounted frequent instances where some of the girls unknowingly soiled their school uniforms with menstrual stains because they had no pads, while others also felt shy to approach their teachers for help.
Ms Hammond called on other philanthropic organisations and individuals to emulate this gesture to help keep the children in school.
