Health practitioners and stakeholders in Cross River State have emphasised the need to domesticate the recently launched policy on menstrual health and hygiene management across the 18 local government areas of the state, aiming to promote menstrual health awareness and improve facilities for girls and women.
The stakeholders expressed the hope that the policy will help to improve health status for women and girls, reduce infections and boost hygiene practices, reduce stigma around menstruation through education, and enhance the provision of sanitation infrastructure in schools and public spaces.
Speaking at a one-day workshop on Tuesday in Calabar, a representative of Save the Children International, Grace Awoyemi, highlighted the importance of prioritising menstrual health and hygiene management, stressing that the menstrual hygiene policy, if domesticated in Cross River, will enable and improve menstrual experiences of women and girls in the state as well as reducing stigmatisation.
She said, “You know, girls and women in Cross River State deserve to enjoy facilities, and deserve to enjoy things that will enable and improve their menstrual experiences. So Save the Children is here to see how to facilitate the state to domesticate this policy.”
“The policy has made provision for sensitisation. To sensitise men and boys on how to break taboos. How to relate so that girls will not be stigmatised.
Because when a particular purpose is not made known to people, people tend to abuse it.
‘’So when men and boys do not really understand what menstruation is, they tend to accept any information they have. So this policy will make provision for boys, girls, women, and girls to understand, and even men at home, to understand the right information and to get the right information about what menstruation is, what menstrual cycle is, and to be able to support their girls and their women at home,” she added.
Commissioner for Information, Dr Erasmus Ekpang, represented by Emmanuel Otteh, a staff in the ministry, commended the stakeholders and facilitators for the initiative, describing it as a welcome development to the entirety of Cross River.
“On our part as a state, I am talking from the point of Ministry of Information, we will give publicity to the exercise and expose the element of menstrual health, the implications and importance of menstrual health within our societies. To foster that collaboration to ensure that the message goes very far. It is a good thing that is coming up now. Regrettably, the state has not had a policy of this before now. So it is a welcome development and we are working to support domesticating the policy at the state level”, he stated.
On her part, Mrs. Felicia Oti, Director of Child Development, Ministry of Women Affairs, noted that the MHHM program is timely and will create awareness to so many youths especially those in the rural areas who are not aware of how to take care of their menstrual health, adding that it will boost stakeholders to be able to carry out sensitization across the state.
“This initiative is very timely because it will create awareness to so many of our youths, especially those in the rural areas who are not aware of how to take care of their menstrual health. And it will also facilitate stakeholders to be able to carry out sensitisation to give awareness to even in the rural areas for our young girls to know how to go about when they are menstruating and so that the girls also will be safe during their menstrual hygiene periods,” she emphasised.
In her remarks, Atim Asuquo from the Ministry of Health, lamented that many young girls have suffered lack of resources to take care of themselves during menstruation, while others resort to using so many things that are unhealthy for them, making them sick and vulnerable to infections and infertility.
“Whenever we talk about menstruation, you see a lot of young people are really affected because most times they don’t have the resources to take care of themselves. And by so doing, they resort to using so many things that are unhealthy for them, making them sick and vulnerable to infections and infertility. For this policy to come in place, everybody now knows that this issue of menstruation is not limited to a family alone. That the state can take responsibility by distributing sanitary pads to schools, by helping to give the young ones a place in the state, and making them believe that they care for them”, she added.
