Imagine missing school simply because you do not have a sanitary towel. For many young girls in Uganda, this is not a hypothetical scenario; it is an everyday reality that quietly shapes the trajectory of their entire lives.
According to the Ministry of Health, 70% of girls in Uganda lack access to proper menstrual products. As a direct consequence, between 23% and 30% of girls miss school during their menstrual cycle each month. Those missed days accumulate into missed lessons, missed exams, and ultimately, a higher rate of school dropout among girls, not because they lack intelligence or ambition, but because they lack something as basic as a sanitary towel. The tragedy runs deeper when you examine why these products are so difficult to access. In Uganda, sanitary products are still classified as non-essential goods and taxed accordingly. A Value Added Tax of nearly 18% is levied on items that girls and women cannot do without.
Products that are not a choice but a biological necessity. Consider what that means for a family that can barely afford a meal. Consider the cruel irony of taxing someone simply for having a body that menstruates.
The high cost of raw materials has driven the price of sanitary towels even further out of reach, pushing the problem to a crisis level. Most available brands range from Uganda Shillings 2,000 to 6,000, depending on the manufacturer. Now pause and consider someone who cannot afford a roll of toilet paper at Shillings 500. How are they expected to purchase a sanitary towel month after month? The mathematics is brutal, and the dignity deficit they produce is even more so.
Beyond the financial barrier, there is the social one. Girls who cannot manage their periods at school face stigma from peers and teachers alike. They are embarrassed in classrooms, shamed in communities, and silenced by a culture that treats menstruation as something shameful rather than something natural. School dropouts are rising, and a painfully small number of people seem willing to have the honest conversation about why.
Despite the scale of the problem, a number of individuals and Non-Governmental Organizations have stepped into the gap, working to address menstrual poverty through awareness campaigns, product distribution, and advocacy. These efforts are commendable, but they cannot substitute for systemic change.
One of the most promising practical interventions has been the introduction of reusable menstrual pads. Unlike disposable products that must be purchased every month, a quality reusable pad can last at least two years. For a family living on very little, this durability is transformative it removes the monthly financial pressure and replaces it with a one-time investment. Sourcing the fabric can sometimes be a challenge, but once that hurdle is cleared, reusable pads offer something disposable products never can: genuine, lasting relief.
But reusable pads offer more than just cost savings. They give girls something that is harder
to measure and easier to overlook agency. The confidence of knowing that your period will
not determine whether you attend school, whether you are seen, or whether you belong. That is not a small thing. That is everything.
The solution, however, must go beyond pads. The government must act. Menstrual products must be reclassified as essential healthcare items because that is precisely what they are, and the taxes imposed on them must be abolished. Period products are not a luxury. They are a basic need, and taxing them is a basic injustice. The question is no longer whether this injustice exists. It clearly does. The question is
whether we have the collective will to fix it.