Interventions around Menstrual Health and Hygiene Must Be Inclusive of Women and Girls with Disabilities

Menstrual Hygiene Day is an Annual Awareness Day marked on May 28 each year. In this article Network Members, Angeline Akai (Kenya Society for the Blind) and Elizabeth Mang’eni (You4She Initiative) talk about the need for conversations on menstrual health and hygiene to include girls and women with disabilities. Barriers that hinder access to menstrual health and hygiene for women and girls with disabilities must be eliminated,’ they note. Read on……………..

The theme of menstrual hygiene day 2022 is making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030. The overarching goal is to build a world where no one is held back because they menstruate.This is the day to highlight the importance of menstrual care and raise awareness about the issues women and girls face in accessing menstrual health products such as sanitary pads, tampons, and menstrual cups.

                              Image Description: Menstrual hygiene awareness among women and girls with disabilities in Busia County   

Over the past years, there have been conversations with regards to access, health and hygiene information and products. This conversation has revolved around how information is delivered to girls and women. However, the conversations and interventions exclude girls and women with disabilities. This is due to barriers such as accessibility in terms of accessing menstrual products and information in accessible formats. For instance there is no use of sign language in sanitary advertisements in our local media stations. 

The most rarely spoken about is how menstrual product manufacturers overlook consumers with disabilities. Most sanitary pads, tampons, or menstrual cups are not a better fit for women and girls who use assistive devices or have no limbs such as hands and/or legs. 

For women and girls who use prosthesis legs, wheelchairs, calipers, or crutches, the sanitary pad cannot be properly kept in place, which in the process causes leakage or even worse falls off during movement. Those without hands or fingers also find it difficult to tear the packet and insert the sanitary pad into their panty or insert the tampon or menstrual cup correctly. 

Likewise, Menstrual Hygiene Education for women and girls with disabilities is not openly discussed by menstrual hygiene campaigners despite the intensified awareness in primary and high schools in Kenya thus leaving them behind.

Availability and high cost of menstrual products pauses a challenge to women and girls with disabilities in the rural areas causing them to opt for alternative solutions such as using rags, leaves, animal skins, and even cow dung that exposes them to multiple infections.

Women and girls with disabilities must be treated with dignity by creating inclusive policies and interventions around menstrual health and hygiene and also creating an enabling environment where they enjoy their human rights to the fullest. This is done by eliminating barriers that hinder access to menstrual health and hygiene by women and girls with disabilities.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My JOURNEY:WOMEN WITH DISABILITY IN LEADERSHIP

Image
As the Kenya Network of Women and Girls with Disabilities continues to amplify the experiences of women and girls with disabilities within leadership and governance spaces, through support from the  Ford Foundation ,the Network has embarked on a campaign that seeks to showcase the experiences of 40 women and girls with disabilities from across four counties namely Kakamega, Kisumu, Nairobi, and Mombasa in Kenya. The leadership journey is not without its struggles.It can get more difficult for women and girls with disabilities who often have to navigate different barriers within their environments. Leadership experiences are not limited to certain spaces.Our women with disabilities are therefore in leadership and different spaces.They are in political leadership;they are village ward administrators, they are activists and champion the rights of women and girls with disabilities in different spaces. What common characteristics do they have? They are women with disabilities who are bother
Read more

16 Days of Activism: Women with Disabilities against Gender Based Violence

Image
As Kenya Network of Women and Girls with Disabilities,we join the globe to mark 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence(GBV).We are #UnitedtoEndGBV and put emphasis on #WomenwithDisabilitiesAgainstGBV. We join together with partners across the Women Gaining Ground Consortium through CREA   in making a collective call to find inclusive approaches of preventing and eliminating gender based violence against women and girls, including those whose voices continue to remain at the margins, such as women and girls with disabilities. We recognise that GBV experiences have similarities across our diversities as women and girls. We also acknowledge the different experiences across these diversities including those of women and girls with disabilities. Recently, the United Nations Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, re
Read more

‘There is No perfect moment to be a Leader...do it everyday’

Image
As a Network, we continue exploring different ways to advance disability inclusion. We endeavor to keep playing a part to ensure that our communities are more inclusive and more accessible to persons with disabilities. Importantly, to support women and girls with disabilities to exercise leadership in their everyday life. One of the activities that we have recently conducted through the support of the Ford Foundation is holding Strategic Dialogues with Youths with Disabilities from different Higher Learning Institutions to reflect through leadership and what it means to them; barriers to their inclusion in their communities and collectively reflecting on solutions to challenges that they face. We brought together 20 young people with disabilities from 10   higher learning  institutions such as the University of Nairobi, Mt. Kenya University, Tangaza University, Thika Technical Institute, Kenya Institute of Special Education, Kenyatta University, NITA (National Industrial Training Autho
Read more