Watch hundreds of protesters including Daisy Lowe and Adwoa Aboah fight to end period poverty outside Westminster

In the UK, many girls as young as 10 years old cannot afford sanitary products.

This shocking statistic was the spark that ignited 18-year-old Amika George's #FreePeriods campaign in April this year.

The A-Level student was one of the co-organisers of the #FreePeriods march that saw protesters descend on Westminster last night in a bid to raise awareness and put an end to period poverty in the UK.

Organised alongside Scarlett Curtis and Grace Campbell of The Pink Protest, the #FreePeriods protest called on Theresa May to make sanitary products accessible to every girl receiving free school meals.

Attendees were asked to wear red to the event to “show the British government that we’re not afraid of blood and they shouldn’t be either”.

Celebrities like Daisy Lowe, Suki Waterhouse, Adwoa Aboah and Tanya Burr also attended the event to spark a conversation around period poverty and women’s rights.

After the event, YouTube vlogger Tanya Burr posted a picture of her holding a sign to her 3.2million Instagram followers and captioned the image, “Girls who can’t afford pads and tampons are using things like newspaper or socks and taping them to their knickers which can be really dangerous and detrimental to their health, others are missing school for fear of bleeding through their school clothes, so are ending up behind in class. I really hope we made enough noise tonight to make a change.”

Protesters at the event were seen holding signs with statements like, “bleeding is not a luxury” and “stop taxing our bodies”.

Amika told the Standard: “The ideal result is for the Government to make a statutory pledge to provide free menstrual products to girls who need them [sanitary products].

“We need to normalise conversations around menstruation- that’s so important.”

To find out more about Amika’s campign and #FreePeriods, visit the website ​freeperiods.org.