Huru International only began distributing free sanitary pads two months ago but already it is seeing a difference among school girls
WHAT DO you use old cloth, blankets and newspapers for? As kindling for the fire? Or maybe dusting round the sitting room? It’s almost unthinkable, but in many African countries, young girls use them as tampons. And it’s costing them valuable school time, not to mention raising their risks of infection from a myriad diseases.
Poor girls often have no access to sanitary products and because of embarrassment end up missing three to five days of school a month. They can end up performing poorly and, eventually, dropping out. The problem is so bad that one in10 Kenyan girls misses school because of menstruation, says Unicef.
But according to a new study by the Said Business School at Oxford University, girls who use pads that are freely distributed missed significantly less school than those who didn’t. On average, the rate of absenteeism was cut by slightly more than half in Ghana, where the research was conducted. It fell from about 21 per cent of school days to 9 per cent of school days.
“If we can keep even a percentage of these girls in school only another year or two, it could pay off enormously, in terms of the effect on fertility rates, child mortality, disease transmission, and other matters of urgent concern,” says Prof Linda Scott, who led the project.
Take Grace Mumbee, aged 13. She is a student at St Elizabeth’s in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s biggest slums. She started using free pads distributed by Huru International, an American-backed charity, two months ago. And already, it’s begun making a major difference to her life. “I was missing school and our parents didn’t have any money for me to buy pads. I was cutting blankets and in school I was failing to answer questions in class because I didn’t want to stand up.”
An ordinary pack of six tampons costs 47 shillings (45 cent) in a Nairobi supermarket. But in Mukuru, where people struggle to pay the 700 KSH (€6.70) a month for their 10ft x 10ft tin-lined homes, it’s money that could be better spent on something else. Thanks to Huru though, Grace has started doing better in school. “My favourite subject is science, but I was getting 50 out of 100 before I got the pads. Now I’m getting 70, A or B.”
Huru gives out kits containing washable sanitary pads, underwear and soap. They are made in Mukuru itself, where a small factory on the grounds of one of the slum’s Catholic Churches churns out 1,200 a day. The pads are made from 100 per cent cotton, and each girl is provided with eight: three large pads for night-time use and five small ones for day-time use. They generally last for at least a year.
Supported by Johnson & Johnson, as well as Elton John’s Aids Foundation and Sunflag Steel, Huru, which is a charity arm of the travel company Micato Safaris, hopes that other women will use microfinance to buy the sewing machines needed to make the pads and sell them.
Huru began freely distributing the pads only two months ago. But already it has begun seeing a difference. “We first wanted to see what the teachers and the students thought,” says Cliff Lumbasyo, the marketing manager with Micato and now one of the programme managers of the project. “We saw that a lot of girls who didn’t go to school lost their self-esteem. When they’re not in school for a few days every month, it snowballs and they end up dropping out. Now though we’ve seen school attendance rise.”
Another problem they discovered was that menstruation can lead to sexual difficulties. For example, “when a boy knows a girl is home and her parents are not around, they can take advantage of it. This happens mostly in rural areas.”
There are some doubts as to the effectiveness of the handing out of free pads though. A study released in December by the University of Chicago claimed that menstruation had little impact on school attendance. It suggests that the real reason girls stayed at home was because of cramps. The research was carried out in Nepal and it has raised doubts to the effectiveness or otherwise of handing out free pads.
But speaking with several students, there is no doubt that the pads have made an enormous difference to their lives. Monica Dindee, a science teacher at St Elizabeth’s, says: “When menstruating, there is nothing to stop the flow of blood so the girls often can’t go out to play. They tie a pullover around their waist and hope that no one sees them. Boys start asking questions and giving them a hard time about having ‘red urine’ or whatever. So they’d rather stay at home. And when they miss school they miss a lot of things. But since they’ve gotten the pads, they now get better grades.”
They’ve certainly given the girls a new sense of confidence. “When I got the pads, I told my brothers that they were slippers,” says Mary Magira (13). “Now they are borrowing them to wear them on their feet.”
