Sanitary pads are a luxury in many homes in Nigeria. A pack of disposable sanitary pads on the average costs between N300.00 and N350.00. For a three or five day menstrual period, girls will conservatively, use two packs costing 700.00 in Nigerian Naira.
In twelve months, that amounts to N8,400.00 naira. A woman and her two daughters will spend 25,200.00 naira yearly for disposable pads. We can imagine the cost, if she has more than two girls.
Many girls cannot afford disposable sanitary pads, so they use washable cloth cut from anything, pieces of materials from tailors or foam cut from mattresses and more.
How many of them use these materials hygienically? That introduces the challenge of disinfectants to keep reusable cloths and other unimaginable materials used by girls germs free and disinfectants also cost money, so now more than ever, there is a need to supply free disposable sanitary pads or disinfectants to girls; subsidise sanitary pads or just make affordable alternatives available to school girls in Nigeria.
These would help both in rural areas and public schools, in urban centres. Let’s not even think of how women and girls cope in refugee camps and how much they need free sanitary pads.
It’s not cliché anymore that girls drop out of school because of lack of disposable pads during their menstrual periods. They also lack water and private safe spaces to change sanitary pads in schools.
This is 2020. That magical year of the future when everything is supposed to be possible and doable is now here.
You may want to ask if this has worked elsewhere in Africa. Oh yes. Kenya achieved that feat in 2017. According to the BBC, Kenya stopped taxing sanitary products.
And for 6 years from 2011- 2017, the government set aside funds to distribute sanitary pads to
underserved girls.
There are templates across the world. Muruga (Arunachalam Muruganantham) in India fabricated an affordable sanitary pad making machine that has helped in getting affordable and quality sanitary pads to many in low income communities.
The Kwazulu Natal Province of South Africa provides free sanitary pads to school girls. In Uganda, although the Museveni government balked, there has a sanitary pad factory making affordable pads for girls. Zambia and Botswana are making concerted efforts.
Free sanitary pads is not a developing world matter, the Scottish government has launched a project to distribute tampons and pads to women who cant afford them.
Politicians should get real and factor this in, when they consider empowering women with cash, as they often do. When they give 5,000 naira to a woman for empowerment, what exactly do they want her to use it for? For starters, it doesn’t buy her or her daughter, disposable sanitary pads for a year.
I yearn for a policy on this issue. I therefore reiterate my call for affordable sanitary pads to girls in schools, if we cannot make it free. And why can it not be free? It is an item that clearly distinguishes a human male from female, it is associated with reproduction and the perpetuation of the human race. If condoms are free and are so easily accessible, why not sanitary pads?
