One million girls miss ten schooldays every term due to menstruation

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

21 May 2006

Can we afford to supply sanitary towels to all teenage, schoolgirls in Kenya? Well, before we attempt to answer that question, we should first ask whether it is necessary to even consider such a proposition. Lets look at the figures:

The average woman menstruates once every four weeks. The menstrual period lasts about three to five days. Thus each year, a woman is on her monthly periods thirteen times – 52 weeks in a year divided by four weeks per menstrual cycle. Using the average of four days per period, it turns out that a woman bleeds for 52 days every year – almost two months cumulatively.

52 days out of 365 in a year works out to about 14 percent of the time. For a schoolgirl, this is a lot of time. The average school term is 13 weeks (excluding the unofficial – and illegal – holiday tuition). That is, 65 weekdays per term. Thus the teenage schoolgirl will be on her periods for about nine schooldays each term (14 percent of 65).

The next question is, how many menstruating girls are enrolled in Kenyan schools? Puberty is reached at about 12 to 13 years of age. Assuming that they start school at six years, this group will usually be in primary class six to seven. This year, there are about 1.2 million girls in standard six, seven, and eight. There are another 500,000 enrolled in secondary schools countrywide. In total, therefore, we have about 1.7 million schoolgirls who have reached puberty.

Now, 50 percent of the Kenyan population lives below the poverty line. That translates to about 850,000 of the teenage schoolgirls. This group cannot afford three meals per day, let alone sanitary towels. I would not be surprised if the number that cannot pay for the towels is over one million.

In summary, about one million pupils miss nine days of school each term due to a natural biological process that they have no control over. Surely, we must investigate the possibility providing sanitary towels to schoolgirls. But is it affordable?

The retail price of top-of-the-range sanitary pads – ultra thin, with wings and side-leakage protection – is about sh65 per pack. One packet is required each menstrual cycle, thus a woman needs about 13 packets each year. With 1.7 million schoolgirls, the total requirement is 22.1 million packs per annum. At sh65 each, the total amount required is just over sh1.4 billion every year.

Now that is surely a large sum of money but compared to the total education budget, it is peanuts. The annual government expenditure in this sector is over sh80 billion; sh1.4 billion is less than 2 percent of that figure. Thus it is affordable.

But is this expense justifiable? In other words, does it make sense to increase the expenditure by 2 percent in order to realise an increase of 10 percent in school attendance? You be the judge of that.