Community Connect Network (CCNET), in collaboration with the Global Neighbourhood Healthcare Development Organisation (GLENEHDO), has held a menstrual health training session for girls in the New Juaben Municipality of the Eastern Region.
The event dubbed ‘Our Day’ was to raise menstrual hygiene awareness and support needy girls with menstrual hygiene products.
The Executive Director of CCNET, Nana Adwoa Agyeman Affrifah, advised the girls to overcome the stigma and shame sometimes associated with menstruation.
She said menstrual hygiene management should begin from the basic schools, where strong educational foundations are laid to battle the challenges associated with menstruation.
Mrs Affrifah made these remarks at the commemoration of World Menstrual Hygiene Day, which seeks to engage the attention of policymakers, media, communities, the public and all stakeholders to speak on menstrual hygiene and integrate it into policies at all levels of society.
She acknowledged that a lot of progress has been made over the years in the urban areas, however, real challenges are found in the rural areas where taboos, cost and access to menstrual hygiene products and lack of sanitary facilities hinder proper menstrual hygiene.
The New Juaben Municipal Education Director, Bartholomew Kwame Ofori, added that inadequate sanitary facilities contribute to girls absenting themselves from school during that period which impacts negatively on their education.
He proposed a policy to ensure that sanitary pads and other menstrual hygiene products are supplied freely to basic school girls starting from upper primary to the JHS.
As part of the celebration, 10 girls were chosen as ambassadors to represent their basic schools whilst sanitary pads and menstrual hygiene management (MHM) kits were distributed to the schools.
 FROM Daniel Bampoe, Koforidua