Female footballers in South Sudan are breaking down “taboo topics” relating to their personal health, thanks to a pilot project organised in the young nation.
“Girls and women’s football, it’s not just football, giving access to play the game, but it’s really tackling some of these social challenges or taboo topics,” Arijana Demirovic, the head of world governing body Fifa’s women’s football development, said.
In South Sudan, girls “struggle quite a lot around the topic of menstruation, menstrual hygiene and also access to sanitary products,” Bosnian-born Demirovic said.
Fifa estimates that 70% of women in the East African nation that gained independence in 2011, after six years of civil war did not have access to hygiene products, preventing girls from regularly attending school and practising sports.
Demirovic and her team visited the capital Juba several times, holding workshops with members of the national team, and distributing hygienic products and kits.
We had to understand what they do for hygiene, what they know and what they use as traditional products,” said the 33-year-old.
“In Africa, too often young girls use inappropriate fabrics, mattress sponges or pieces of cut-out fabric,” Senegalese Yaya Helene Ndiaye, the president of the NGO Kitambaa, which accompanies Fifa in South Sudan, said.
Source: IOL
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