Wajir County First Lady Rukia Abdinasir on Thursday said there is need to educate communities about the importance of menstrual hygiene and to provide greater access to sanitary pads and other menstrual hygiene products to girls.
Speaking at Wajir Girls Secondary School when she launched free dignity kits worth Sh40 million shillings courtesy of the Wajir County Government, Rukia said one of the major challenges facing adolescent girls in accessing sanitary pads is poverty, lack of sufficient resources and poor infrastructure.
She said the initiative is primarily aimed at retaining our adolescent girls in schools while restoring their dignity and protecting their self-esteem.
"Whereas girls from less privileged families have improvised solutions such as using unsanitary materials like old rags, tissue paper or even mud to manage their menstruation, this is unhealthy and can result to serious infections and diseases with long term medical," she said.
Rukia regretted that prioritisation of other family needs and poverty has denied families the ability to afford pads for their daughters and in some cases, the economic situation is so dire that this basic need has been deemed a luxury.
She said many rural areas lack proper sanitation facilities such as toilets, and even when there are toilets, they lack proper waste management.
This, she said, makes it even more challenging for young girls to manage their menstrual hygiene noting that the social stigma associated with menstruation makes it even difficult for girls to openly speak about it.
The county first lady said that this has affected girls’ enrollment in school while also causing other consequences such as absenteeism from school, withdrawal, low self-esteem, social stigma or even missed opportunities at work.
She, however, said that the programme by the county has gone along way in addressing the challenge facing girls noting that ninety per cent of girls in both primary and secondary school are enrolled for the free sanitary pad programme which is a huge increase in the number of beneficiaries in the previous years.
The target, she said, is to reach school-going girls across the constituencies of the county in order to achieve a 100 per cent enrollment, which she said is a significant step in empowering the girl child and achieving menstrual health management for school-going girls.
The project, which was first initiated by Governor Ahmed Abdullahi in his first term in the 2015/16 financial year and allocated an initial amount of Sh10 million shillings, has since seen the money increased to Sh40 million.
"It is my belief that we will be able to take the sanitary towel campaign to even higher levels from now onwards to provide the girls with an uninterrupted education, encourage cleanliness, in turn promote confidence and self-esteem," Rukia added.
She promised to continue advocating for the right to access dignity kits and all other needs noting that women remain a key pillar, source of strength and critical players for the development and prosperity of the society.
A total of 5,729 cartons each containing 48 packets of sanitary pads and additional 11,555 bundles, each containing eight undergarments was distributed to different girls schools.
According to previous surveys and reports conducted on the Girl Child, a girl misses school due to menses for 4 to 5 days in every 28 days (month) thereby losing three weeks of learning every school term.