Africa-Press – Malawi. Aids Healthcare Foundation Malawi (AHF Malawi) – a subsidiary of the global nonprofit providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy regardless of ability to pay – has called for increased and enhanced financing towards menstrual health and hygiene in an effort to improve girls’ and female students’ access to education, health, and overall well-being.
AHF Malawi Advocacy and Marketing Officer, Davies Mwachumu, has also emphasized the need for the Government of Malawi and other stakeholders to consider providing resources for affordable menstrual products, safe sanitation facilities, and comprehensive MHH education, schools can empower girls to manage their periods with dignity, attend school regularly, and reach their full potential.
Mwachumu was speaking in an interview on the sidelines of a national advocacy dialogue on menstural health and hygiene (MHH) held at the Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe on Friday.
The purpose of the dialogue was to give stakeholders, including the girls themselves, a platform to voice out their concerns and challenges in accessing MHH services and propose possible solutions and recommendations for addressing them.
Mwachumu observed that financing remains the biggest barrier towards achieving MHH services for majority of the Malawian women and girls, with school-going one failing to access education due to stigma and discrimination.
“The Ministry of Water and Sanitation is the one responsible for MHH issues, and when you look at their budget, you’ll realize that it cannot enable them to do most of programmes designed to address most of the challenges that were highlighted during the dialogue.So because of that reason, in that discussion, we also focused on how the ministry and other stakeholders can raise some more resources for the ministry, as well as the sector,” he said.
Mwachumum further lamented that the prices of sanitary pads are not affordable to most girls in schools, a thing that limits their access and utilization of them.
“We also tackled the issue of clean water. We’ve noted that in most schools and communities, people have no access to clean clean water, which is making it difficult for the girls to help themselves during menstruation periods. So we requested the government to engage water boards to subsidize water bills for schools or indeed consider increasing resources for the schools to be paying bills for water,” he said.
Esther Jeke – who has just finished her Primary School Leaving Certification of Education (PSLCE) examinations at Biwi Full Primary School in Lilongwe – appealed to the government to remove tax on sanitary pads, saying this is the only way the items can be affordable to girls and students from low income earning families.
In his remarks, the Deputy Director of Sanitation and Hygiene in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Matthews Jason Kalaya, said acknowledged the challenges Malawian girls and female students face in accessing MHH services both in domestic as well as school settings.
But Kalaya told the participants that the government has embarked on various interventions, including construction of change rooms in schools to improve MHH access for the female learners.
“There there are a lot of activities to address issues of menstrual hygiene, and there are also ongoing discussions at government level to find ways of making sanitary pads more affordable for poor communities,” he said, adding that the government has intensified awareness campaign on MHH to address myths, taboos, misconceptions and stigma surrounding menstruation in Malawi.
AHF Malawi supports a total of 27 health facilities across five districts, with its program employing several strategies to address the HIV epidemic, including enhancing access to quality HIV preventive services, improving the quality of HIV medical care, providing human resource support, and driving infrastructural development.
In its MHH interventions, AHF Malawi is working with Girls Act, which it established in schools as a vehicle for empowering girls and young women to stay healthy and thrive.
It is also working closely with the media, government and other stakeholders in its advocating for an end to stigma and discrimination against girls and female students.
For More News And Analysis About Malawi Follow Africa-Press
