Kadaga asks UN to provide pads for refugees

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has asked the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to provide reusable sanitary pads to refugees.

At a Kampala news conference to launch AFRIpads, a reusable brand of sanitary pads that recently acquired Uganda National Bureau of Standards certification, Kadaga said refugees suffer from scarcity of pads.

“The United Nations should take interest and offer reusable sanitary pads to refugees. I have seen in the press recently that most of them go without pads,” Kadaga said at Hotel Africana in Kampala on Monday 14 May 2018.

The sanitary pads available on the market, said Kadaga, cannot be cost effective for the refugees since they are not reusable, and that given the economics at refugee camps, they had better acquired reusable ones.

Parliament, said the Speaker, will incentivize the production and sale of reusable sanitary pads through favorable taxation.

UNBS’ Deputy Executive Director Standard, Mrs. Patricia Ejalu, said the reusable pads should put an end to situations where women and girls miss work or school due to issues of menstrual hygiene.

“We do not want situations where women cannot go to office, work or tend to their garden because of something they cannot control,” said Mrs. Ejalu.

AFRIpads’ Executive Director, Sophia Grinvalds, said the pads are locally manufactured and are in line with the Buy Uganda Build Uganda policy.

Grinvalds said the certification will better trade in reusable sanitary pads.

“This should open up the doors for traders and export of locally manufactured reusable sanitary pads,” said Grinvalds.

Even though menstruation is a normal, biological process, it continues to act as a barrier to the healthy livelihoods of millions of women and girls across Africa.

In Uganda, menstruation acts as a major barrier to the girl child education.

A study conducted by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and UK AID estimates that 22 per cent of girls are enrolled for high school in comparison to 91 per cent enrolled in primary school.

Research attributes this discrepancy to lack of access to menstrual hygiene products and difficulties experienced by girls, especially in rural schools, when managing their menstrual health at school.

The new UNBS standard for reusable pads, US 1782 : 2017, is one of only two standards for this product across all of Africa.