Reproductive health — it’s time for a lasting solution to period poverty

René Sparks is a nurse, health equity advocate, and Tekano and Aspen New Voices Fellow with 21 years’ experience working across South Africa with a focus on ensuring equitable and just access to quality healthcare for all.

In the middle of Women’s Month, those of us working in the field of sexual and reproductive health are reminded of the countless initiatives that have come and gone in an attempt to address the extreme period poverty that continues to plague women and girls in South Africa. 

We all know the detrimental costs.

In South Africa, 3.7 million girls are unable to access menstrual hygiene products. A University of Stellenbosch study concluded that 30% of girls were still missing school due to periods and lack of access to sanitary towels.

It is hard to imagine the levels of poverty that so many are living through if you have not experienced it yourself — the kind of poverty that leaves girls in South Africa vulnerable to sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking. And beyond this, the deep crisis of confidence and the lack of dignity.

I speak from my own memory of being told, as a young schoolgirl, that nothing would become of me and that I wouldn’t make it to university. I managed to break the pattern, but millions are still trapped in the cycle.

For school-going girls, access to menstrual hygiene products has been a long-standing issue. Many young women and girls rely on free distribution programmes, often linked to universities or HIV prevention programmes at local clinics or within communities. In the worst cases, young women resort to transactional sex to get the money to tend to this basic need, resulting in increasing cases of HIV.

Since 2016, the Department of Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities has been developing the Sanitary Dignity Policy Framework. The resulting policy, published in 2019, sets minimum norms and standards for providing sanitary towels to indigent women and girls. Implementation, however, has not been as successful as hoped.

With Covid-19, school closures meant that, once again, girls had to do without. But Covid-19 only amplified already existing failures. Some damning findings were published in a report last year after a forensic investigation into a sanitary towel pilot project launched in the 2016-17 financial year; the report shows R4-million worth of sanitary towels, destined for the poorest schools, were reported missing in KwaZulu-Natal.

It did not stop there.

A further R2-million surplus stock was then procured, but the investigation found mismanagement, including an oversupply of stock found in storage facilities in some areas, whereas other areas were completely underserved. The 2020 report does not mention redistribution of this stock, so we can conclude that the pilot project did not reach those in need or serve its purpose.

Activists demand free sanitary pads for schoolgirls at the 2016 Aids conference in Durban during former Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi’s speech. (Photo: Spotlight)