Stop awarding school contracts without toilets — Coordinator
The National Coordinator of the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area Sanitation Water Project (GKMA-SWP), George Asiedu, has appealed to the Ghana Education Service and the district assemblies to stop awarding contracts for schools that do not include toilet facilities.
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He said every school should have access to improved toilet facilities with running water for use by the students.
Aside from these, he said the girls’ toilets should also have a changing room for use by female students during their menstrual cycle.
Menstrual Hygiene day
Mr Asiedu made the call in Kumasi during the commemoration of this year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day which was on the theme “We are committed to educating everyone about menstruation.”
He said access to improved water supply and sanitation facilities with appropriate hygiene management features “are the surest way for effective and efficient menstrual hygiene management.
“The girl child and women in general can manage their periods hygienically, safely and privately with dignity when they have access to appropriate household and institutional sanitation facilities and the appropriate sanitary products,” he said.
He said the GKMA had been committed to the provision of household and institutional toilet facilities since its inception in 2015 and had contributed towards the provision of over “48,246 improved household toilets and 437 disability and gender friendly schools’ sanitation facilities, equipped with adequate water supply and solid waste management features and an exclusive changing room for girls purposely for managing their periods.”
Mr Asiedu said the project intervention had supported over 206,000 school girls, representing 51 per cent of the 404,000 school pupils’ population that had benefited from the sanitation sub-component of the project.
Not taboo
The Kokofu Dwantoahemaa, Nana Awhenie-Bodom, who was the guest speaker at the programme, asked the girls not to feel shy during that time of the month and to feel free to talk about it.
She said menstruation was a natural phenomenon and not a taboo but an indication that they were complete women and should not consider themselves unclean.
She appealed to the girls to use appropriate products during that time and to practice menstrual hygiene to keep themselves safe and clean.
Education
A Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing of the University of Ghana, Dr Josephine Kyei, called for more education on menstrual hygiene to enable parents and teachers to provide the needed support for girls during that period of the month.
She debunked the myth that blood from menstruation was unclean and dirty, saying it was just like the normal blood in one’s vein and only “becomes unclean and dirty when you do not observe proper menstrual hygiene.”
The Capacity Building Coordinator of the GKMA Project, Charlotte Agyei-Marfo, presented 200 cartons of sanitary towels to the Islamic Secondary School for distribution to the over 3,000 girls of the school.
