In its bid to help address the challenges surrounding menstruation for young girls, Golden Star Resources (GSR) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH have launched a one-year campaign on menstrual hygiene management in communities of GSR.
The menstrual hygiene management campaign, under the “COVID-19 Pandemic Management in times of COVID-19 and beyond”, will promote access to evidence-based information about menstruation and menstrual hygiene products with the goal to prevent stigmatization against menstruating women and girls.
It will run in 14 schools in Wassa East district in the Western Region. Over the course of the campaign, 772 girls will benefit from almost 14,000 packs of sanitary pads to improve their menstrual hygiene management.
Part of the campaign strategy will see a team of health professionals travel to the schools to teach the girls basic grooming through periodic education on keeping clean during their periods and discarding sanitary pads properly.
The education will also target mothers, underscoring the importance of initiating conversations on menstruation and hygiene management with their girl children.
Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Wassa East Ag. Director of Health Services, Sheila Ampadu Okyere, advised the beneficiaries to change their pads frequently, use cotton sanitary pads, wash reusable pads properly, keep the vagina clean and to seek gynecological help for any irritation around the vagina.
She also stated, “we need passionate leaders to popularize menstrual hygiene management and ensure it finds its way into policy documents as well as the sector plans and a tangible programme on the ground.”
Managing Director of Golden Star Resources, Shadrack Sowah, re-echoed appeals for the exclusion of taxes on sanitary pads.
The jointly implemented project with Golden Star Resources, is one of several private partners and funded through the develoPPP programme on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The objective of the project is to increase the economic and health resilience within the catchment communities of the private partners in the mining industry to ensure they are better prepared to withstand future pandemic.
This project started in September 2021 and hopes to have supported the catchment communities of its partners with enhanced access to healthcare, through Mass NHIS registration, extensive health screening exercise for various diseases, training of selected health personnel and campaign on maternal health by 2024.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri