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Henry Okonkwo
Over 200 young girls at a slum community in Lagos State have been empowered with knowledge on sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), wellbeing and education of the girl child.
This training, which was organised by a non-governmental organisation, HACEY Health Initiative (HHI), took place at Zumuratu community in Ajegunle, Lagos State, during the 8th edition of its annual Girl Child Conference recently.
According to the group’s programme officer, Folashade Adebanjo, the programme was not only held in their bid to nurture indigent young girls living slum communities, but to further promote their rights as women and girls and inculcate gender equality mindset in them.
“The community was chosen due to the fact that it’s a disadvantaged community (slum) and has a high number vulnerable girl,” she said.
The discussions which centred around puberty, menstrual health, hygiene, hormonal imbalance, health care seeking behaviour, STIs/HIV ( sexually transmitted infections/ Human immune virus) were a major eye-opener for most of the girls. On menstruation, Adebanjo, who was also the facilitator, explained to girls the process of ovulating and conception. She made it known that cycle days vary from woman to woman as well as no of days of menstruation.
She also spoke on hygiene during menstruation, advising girls to spread their pants under the sun, or better still iron them to kill residual germs that soap can’t kill.
Several issues and misconceptions on the use of contraceptives were deliberated upon, and common ailments like ‘Candida’ popularly known as ‘toilet disease’ discussed. And the participants were advised to always take their health seriously and desist from self-medication to save resources, avoid health complications and lifelong damages.
Aside from the discussions, HHi also conducted free medical tests for the girls.“ we didn’t only train over 200 girls on SRHR, we also conducted free HIV/AIDS tests for almost 100 girls,” Adebanjo said.
