Kenyan senator Gloria Orwoba on Tuesday, February 14, went to parliament wearing blood-red stained trousers as a way to advocate for free distribution of sanitary towels to school girls. It must have been fun to watch people go crazy on something that about 2 billion people go through across the world every month. They must have felt disgusted and angry that such an unsanitary person was their colleague. They forget that some people in our communities go through the same unsanitary experience every month for decades. They have to skip school, work, and other social functions, which would have been beneficial and contributed to their development. World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) define menstrual hygiene management as a state where women and adolescent girls are using a clean menstrual management material to absorb or collect menstrual blood, that can be changed in privacy as often as necessary, using soap and water for washing the body as required, and having access to safe and convenient facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials. They understand the basic facts linked to the menstrual cycle and how to manage it with dignity and without discomfort or fear. Even in Rwanda, menstrual hygiene management remains a luxury, despite efforts to ease women and girls’ access to products. In a move to ease access to menstrual health products, the government in 2019 scrapped VAT on sanitary pads and tampons, although their prices generally remained the same. Good quality sanitary pads cost from Rwf 1,000 a packet, and some users may need more depending on how heavy their flow is. Households with more girls and women may find it more challenging, especially that Rwf 1,000 is almost a day’s wage in some parts of the country. This results in some women resorting to unsafe methods of dealing with a period, some using the traditional piece of cloth to avoid blood leaks, while others have been helped by well-wishers to access reusable washable sanitary pads. In partnership with Imbuto Foundation, the Ministry of Education launched ‘the girl’s room’ in public schools, where girls would get sanitary pads for free while in school. Although this was undoubtedly beneficial, these rooms only operate on school days, not on weekends or school breaks. Several ‘free the period’ campaigns were also made and people pledged thousands of sanitary pads to vulnerable women, but this was proved not-sustainable because of consistency. It is high time the government worked with period activists to provide free sanitary pads, at least to the most vulnerable women and girls who otherwise couldn’t afford them. But first, let’s talk about menstruation without shame and disgust.
