Dhaka (AFP)
- Girls in rural villages will get free sanitary pads to stop them skipping
school during their periods as a result of social taboos around menstruation, a
Bangladesh minister said Monday.
So-called
"period shame" in the highly conservative nation of 168 million
people has caused more than 40 percent of Bangladesh schoolgirls to stay at
home during menstruation, researchers say.
"This
is very alarming. We cannot put their future at stake," Junior Information
Minister Murad Hasan told AFP.
Hasan said
the "unavailability of menstrual pads" and "cost of hygiene
products" were mostly to blame for the absences in village schools where
some 63 percent of the population lives.
"Poor
parents often prefer their girls to stay at home during their menstrual period
rather than buying them hygiene products," he added.
Hasan, a
doctor and former junior health minister, said the government 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 South Asian nation 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 tackling this social stigma," Banu, the
general secretary of the female advocacy group Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, told
AFP.
"This
initiative will surely help the dropout rate to go down."
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