By Linda Naa Deide Aryeetey, GNA
Accra, June 6. GNA – Oxfam Ghana Thursday engaged young women, and girls at the Accra Rehabilitation Center on good menstrual hygiene practices for infection prevention during their periods.
The education, which was tailored at young girls who are blind, deaf and dumb and intellectually disabled, forms part of this year’s World Mental Health Day Celebration.
Oxfam also donated sanitary pads and kits worth thousands of cedis to the young girls at the Center.
Ms Thelma Akyere Hayford, Oxfam’s Gender Adviser, said the gesture was part of Oxfam’s Power to Choose Project, sponsored by Global Affairs Canada to educate young girls on reproductive health.
“When it comes to conversations around Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, we tend to leave out a marginal group of the population, thus Persons Living with Disabilities, we do not try our best to include their peculiar needs in these topics,” she said
The girls were educated on the best ways to use washrooms without contracting infections, and how to dispose of sanitary pads.
They were enlightened on the changes their bodies go through and advised to be mindful of sexual relations during their fertile windows.
Ms Hayford said Oxfam together with its implementing partners were working in communities to ensure that women and girls had access to sexual and reproductive service and could assert their sexual rights while disabusing the myths and misconceptions about sexual health.
Menstruation is a natural fact of life and a monthly occurrence for over 1.8 billion girls and women of reproductive age, yet millions of menstruators across the world are denied the right to manage their monthly menstrual cycle in a dignified, healthy way.
UNICEF’s 2019 systematic review of menstrual hygiene management requirements, its barriers, and strategies for persons with disabilities found that menstruation challenges were a source of shame for girls and women with disability.
Girls and women with disabilities face even greater challenges in managing their menstruation hygienically and with dignity, often facing a double stigma due to both social norms around gender and menstruation and having a disability.
Ms Nina Efedi Okorofo, a Social Development Officer at the Accra Rehabilitation Center, told the Ghana News Agency that girls with disability faced a lot of abuses when it came to exercising their sexual, reproductive health and rights.
“When we visit the pharmacy for contraceptives, we are heckled and verbally abused with comments like ‘do you also have feelings’, ‘who would want to have something to do with a woman suffering like you’,” she said.
GNA