Menstrual health management (MHM) intervention in Adjumani District

With funding from Fund for Innovation and Transformation (FIT) through the Canadian Government, Women’s Global Health Innovations (WGHI) in partnership with Public Health Ambassadors Uganda (PHAU) and WoMena Uganda, is implementing a menstrual health management (MHM) intervention in Adjumani District. The project is focused on improving menstrual health management through Menstrual Health Management (MHM) Education and Creating accessibility to the most sustainable menstrual health management method the Menstrual Cup (MC) branded Bfree cup. The intervention targets women and girls in Adjumani’s refugee settlements as well as the host community. This is a scale-up of the project based on the successful pilot in Alere and Dzaipi refugee settlements at Alere and Dzaipi Secondary schools in 2019.

The goal of the intervention is to empower adolescent girls and women in Adjumani District through improved Menstrual Health Management (MHM) Education. The MHM Education initiative informs the community about the impact of menstrual health on girls’ and women’s lives. The intervention also includes the distribution of the reusable Menstrual Cups (MCs)to adolescent girls and adult women through the existing local structures in the community e.g (Village Health Teams, Women savings groups, etc). As they earn a living within their community, using different sales and distribution models the girls and Women will sell these cups to the community to ensure they make a profit throughout the project cycle. To the project date registered success and has concluded four out of the six activities as per the workplan main activities as per the work plan among which are;

• Inception/stakeholders engagement,
• Bfree   Media Café Launch
• Baseline data collection
• Menstrual Health Training of Trainers  and finance Training
• Inception / stakeholder’s engagement

Project updates:

WoMena team successfully conducted the stakeholders and inception meeting with the District officials in 13-14 October 2020. The meeting involved participation from local partners for example CARE International and Lutheran World Federation, who advised to create structures that, will promote the Bfree MC. These structures should however be in position to complement the existing structures which have already been registered through these organizations. In other words, they recommended that the selling of the MCs should be integrated into the already existing structures.

Another recommendation was made to involve the existing structures through local organizations for example the saving and Loans associations, Refugee Women Councils and the Village health teams.

The Adjumani District Local government also made valuable contribution to the project goals, objectives and timelines that were presented and there was unanimous acceptance of the project. A total of 20 Bfree menstrual cup tins were distributed to the stakeholders and the members of the savings groups.