Plan Ghana introduces washable, reusable sanitary pads

This forms part of the efforts to ensure that no girl child is left behind in acquiring sustainable education.

The pads, which were made from scientifically approved cotton fabrics or textiles and are environmentally friendly have a five-year lifespan thus replaces the regular type of plastic sanitary pads.

The innovation has been received with joy by menstruating girls and their parents in their catchment areas in the Eastern, Central and Volta Regions of Ghana.

In an interactive session with members of the Tafi Mador and Adgbotunu farming communities in the Afadjato South District, the Gender Specialist, Plan Ghana, Mrs Lilian Bruce said that the introduction of the new washable and reusable pads has come to replace the plastic kind of menstrual pads which in a way was making some of the girls not to frequent school because whenever their parents were unable to buy them pads it made the girls to absent themselves from school.

“These pads are cost-effective because they can be used for five years, they are washable and can be used over a period of time hence the headache of the girls having to break their backs in some instances before they can get pads to manage their menses is a thing of the past,” she stressed.

She noted that the pads are environmentally friendly in the sense that it comes to reduce the instance of disposing the normal plastic pads, reduces the depression of the girls go through to always look for money for pads and would aide in the prevention of some diseases like cervical cancer in women associated with the use of some plastic pads.

“In Ghana, women make 51 percent of the population and imagine that 70 percent of us use plastic pads that are disposed and buried in the soil all the time after usage. These pads have come at the right time that we are all ensuring environmental sustainability,” the Gender Specialist emphasized.

She in that vein took the school children through how to use the pads efficiently.