By Emmanuel Adeleke
To commemorate the World Menstrual Hygiene Day, the Girls to Women with Ease Foundation (G-2-W²E) has distributed 600 free sanitary pads to women in four major markets in Ibadan.
Girls to Women With Ease Foundation(G-2-W²E) is a Christian-based, non-profit organisation, with primary focus on creating awareness and mounting sensitisation campaigns on care, protection and prevention of diseases associated with the female reproductive organs.
Speaking during a sensitisation campaign on Saturday, the team leader, Dr Olufunmi Adegbile, said the awareness will help in curbing infections and infertility among women in the society.
“Today being the world menstrual hygiene day, we are looking at the menstrual hygiene of women, particularly the young girls
“In the last two years, we have been going to public secondary schools to train and sensitise towards good menstrual hygiene.
“While doing that, we discovered that a large number of girls are using rags for menstruation and this was so alarming that we have to zero in on saying no to use of rags for menstruation.
“The foundation has been campaigning against use of rags, newspapers for menstruation. We discovered that even the students are not ashamed of it because they don’t know that pad exist, they don’t know about sanity trowel.
“We just plan to meet their parents in the market. Obviously, since they are not ashamed, there are 300 to 400 students that are menstruating in public schools.
“We just asked those that are still using rags for menstruation to wait after the lecture, they just raised up their hands, they don’t know that it is something awful , horrible, bad,” Adegbile said
She explained that the foundation found out that some young married couples have issues with infertility as a result of infections contacted from bad menstrual hygiene when they were young.
“What led us to this, we discovered that quite a handful of our young married couples, that married their wives as virgin, have issues with infertility, and when they go for a test, it was discovered that these women have been carrying on infections for years.
“The infections were traced to bad menstrual hygiene, most especially those that were using rags when they were young.
“We are doing that to educate the mothers, as well as give sanitary trowel to indigent mothers to take home to their children.
“Our grandparents must have escaped this because they are quite hygienic when it comes to personal hygiene. You can’t compare those women of those days that doesn’t have much they are doing than home affairs and taking care of their children and their home. You can’t compare them with girls of nowadays that you will even be begging to go and bath. This is the implication of what we have discovered,” she said
She urged all stakeholders to make free sanitary pads available to female students in public schools.
“My message to the ladies is that the way they take care of their outer part, you will discover that our young girls are very heavy when it comes to painting of faces and their bodies. They should take more care of their inner part, the private part. They should care to know what they need to do. You let them know that they don’t use soap to wash private part. You use ordinary water. They should major on how to take care of their person not just painting of their outer body,” Adegbile added.
The foundation carried out awareness campaigns in four major markets within Ibadan metropolis. The markets are Aleshinloye, Mokola, Bodija and Dugbe
