-Female inmates decry unconducive sanitary condition
BY: Shallon S. Gonlor
NIMBA COUNTY — Female prisoners at the Sanniquellie Central Prison have reported the “dehumanizing” experience of the prison, explaining that they suffered during the menstruation period due to the lack of sanitary napkins and health care.
In Liberia, access to affordable menstruation products is a privilege. According to reports, poverty forces half of the adolescent girls and women across the country to use unhygienic old rags to manage their menstruation.
in June 2022, Community Healthcare Initiative (CHI), a feminist-led organization established in 2014, petitioned the 54th National Legislature to take action to improve menstrual health by abolishing a tax on sanitary pads and providing menstrual changing rooms in schools.
Nusone Perkins, CHI head of communication and mobilization while reading the petition argued that the high cost of sanitary pads means thousands of Liberian women and girls do not have access to the product which is necessary for their wellbeing.
Ms. Perkins: “Menstruation is a normal biological process; therefore, women and girls should not be denied access to hygienic products,” Ms. Perkin added. We are here to ask our lawmakers to publicly stand with the women and girls of Liberia, to tackle period poverty by removing taxes and import duties on sanitary pads, which will make the product more affordable and accessible for women and girls, especially those who cannot afford it.”
During the observance of the 2022, Menstrual Hygiene Day celebration, a conglomeration of women rights organizations in Partnership with ActionAid Liberia, hightened CHI campaign with a call to the past government to ensure that the importation of sanitary pads is duty free. The call was intended to ensure that Sanitary Pads are affordable, and accessible for women and girls across Liberia.
Unfortunately, nothing has changed, as a lot of female inmates at the Sanniquellie Central Prison remained constrained with unpleasant sanitary conditions.
A menstrual pad, or simply a pad, (also known as a sanitary pad, sanitary towel, sanitary napkin or feminine napkin) is an absorbent item worn by women in their underwear when menstruating, bleeding after giving birth, recovering from gynecologic surgery, experiencing a miscarriage or abortion, or in any other situation where it is necessary to absorb a flow of blood from the vagina.
Among several challenges, the female inmates named the lack of adequate toilets with running water, privacy, and menstrual hygiene supplies constitute degrading treatment in violation of international human rights law, and the rights of women and girls to manage menstruation with dignity.
The health of female prisoners is among the poorest at the only prison facility in the county and the apparent inequalities pose both a challenge and an opportunity for adequate health systems.
WomenVoices visit at the facility on Saturday, February 17, 2024, observed that imprisoned women constitute a minority, but their special health needs are poor and frequently neglected.
The urgent need to review current healthcare delivery services and gender sensitivity is clear, according to expert opinions and experience from the overcrowded Sanniquellie Central Prison facility.
The prison is one of the largest in Liberia, housing more than three hundred inmates, as conditions at the prison are said to be deplorable with inmates due to overcrowding, and the lack of adequate health care, and good food among others.
Reporting the devastating health conditions of female prisoners, our Nimba County Correspondent said the current provision of health care to women imprisoned fails to meet their needs and is, in too many cases, fall short of what is required by human rights and international recommendations.
This includes a lack of gender sensitivity and practices in the prison, violations of women’s human rights, and failure to accept that female prisoners have more and different healthcare needs compared with their male prisoners, which often related to reproductive health issues, mental health problems, sanitary napkins among others.
Advocates have rallied the national governments, policy-makers, and prison management through the Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Correction to address gender insensitivity and social injustice in prisons, especially women’s sanitary napkins and healthcare.
They believe that there are immediate needful steps that could be taken to deal with public health neglect, abuses of human rights, and failures in gender sensitivity against female prisoners in the Sanniquellie Central Prison, while the public health importance of imprisonment is insufficiently recognized.
At the climax of Saturday’s visit, a close look at the needs of women in prison and related health aspects raised issues of gender inequity and insensitivity to human rights neglect, showing a general lack of public health concern in the Sanniquellie Central Prison.
The number of these women prisoners resulted in the commission of crimes ranging from aggravated assault, drug abuse, murder, and other civil and criminal cases, which are mostly common crimes committed by women.
HEALTH CARE NEEDS
Women in prison generally have more specific health problems than male prisoners and tend to place a greater demand on the prison health service than men do.
Women prisoners frequently suffer from mental health problems, among which post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and self-harming are regularly reported, suffering from mental health problems to a higher degree than both male prisoners.
Women are at greater risk than men of entering prison with sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS, often as a result of past high-risk sexual behaviors including prostitution, sex work, and being a victim of sexual abuse.
Additionally, women in prison have specific health issues; the most prominent are related to reproductive health such as menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, and breastfeeding.
