It is emerging that girls in the rural areas of Ghana are being compelled to sleep with older men for money to buy sanitary pads.
This disheartening development was revealed by the Chief Executive Officer of Eco-me Africa Amdiya Abdul-Latiff.
According to her, her organization has observed that poverty in the rural parts of the country and the high cost of sanitary pads are the main causes of this troubling trend as girls are not able to afford to buy them.
“Some of them too had no option but were pushed to exchange sex for pads. It is a common trade in the poorest areas of Ghana, where young girls are pushed to sleep with men, mostly older men, just so they can have money to purchase a sanitary pad,” Amdiya Abdul-Latiff said in an interview with Joy News’ Prime Morning host, Asieduwaa Akumia, on Monday, December 5, 2022.
She went on further to lament how some of the girls resort to unhygienic means of dealing with their menstrual periods for lack of no other alternative.
“They were resulting in unhygienic means like using socks – which are very popular by the way, newspapers, dirty rags, and then dried leaves. They are easily available in the rural communities, so anything at all that can absorb and hold blood, that’s what they use,” the Eco-me Africa CEO said, as quoted by myjoyonline.com.
She also bemoaned how the challenges with menstruation and the high cost of sanitary pads have been forcing many rural girls to drop out of school.
She cited research which found that many girls sometimes miss school when menstruating because they cannot bear the embarrassment and frustration that it inflicts on them in the absence of sanitary pads.
There have been calls by many notable people and non-governmental organisations on successive governments to remove taxes on the importation of sanitary pads which is partly responsible for the high costs. But those calls have yet to trigger any action by the powers that be.