Govt to provide free sanitary pads for schoolgirls
Girls in rural areas will get free sanitary pads to stop skipping school during their periods -- a result of social taboo around menstruation, said state minister Murad Hasan yesterday.
This feeling of shame surrounding period has caused more than 40 percent of Bangladeshi schoolgirls to stay at home during menstruation, researchers say.
“This is very alarming. We cannot put their future at stake,” State Minister of Information, Murad Hasan, told AFP.
Hasan said the “unavailability of menstrual pads” and “cost of hygiene products” were mostly to blame for the absence in village schools where some 63 percent of the population lives.
“Parents who are living in poverty often prefer keeping their girls home during their period, rather than buying them hygiene products,” he added.
Hasan, a doctor and former state minister of health, said the government has planned to roll out the scheme by early next year in some 90,000 villages.
Dhaka, together with aid agencies, has been trying to raise awareness about menstruation among parents and schoolgirls.
Only six percent of schools in the country include menstrual hygiene in their curriculum, according to a recent World Bank report.
Leading women’s rights activist Maleka Banu welcomed the move. “We have been demanding it for a long time. It’s a positive thing that such initiatives are seeing the light and tackling the social stigma,” Banu, the general secretary of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, told AFP, “This initiative will surely help decrease the dropout rate.”
Comments