Seeing the sanitary napkins women empowerment project whilst as part of 2016 Medical Yatra made me want to look into this topic a bit more.
For someone from a developed country we do not think much with regards to this area of female hygiene nor do we generally have any issues with access to sanitary napkins or tampons. Yet many women around the world still use scraps of dirty cloths which they cannot clean or sanitise properly. Alarmingly I read that up to 70% of all reproductive diseases in India are caused by poor menstrual hygiene.
For so many women around the world menstruation is still a taboo subject with many restrictions placed on the women particularly around isolation as they are considered unclean. Yet I can see why the commercially available products are not used openly and freely as women especially in rural villages have trouble to access, afford and dispose of them properly. Further to this there is still much lacking on education on menstruation and female hygiene.
Fortunately there are several different projects currently in place using different approaches to address this issue including the use of cloths and menstrual cups.
This is the first time I’ve come across menstrual cups like SheCup or Ruby Cup. Both use a medical grade silicon cup which is inserted in the vagina like a tampon. The benefits of these are that they are much cheaper and better for the environment than commercially available sanitary napkins.
Another project/initiative is Goonj’s Not Just a Piece of Cloth (NJPC) which was established in 2005 and has expanded globally. They use old/discarded cloth to create reusable sanitary napkins and use this as platform to engage and educate about female hygiene whilst also providing job opportunities.
The basis of the project that I saw at the Gram Seva Trust Hospital is related to the work Arunachalam Muruganantham and his company Jayaashree Industries. What is particularly inspiring about Arunachalam is that he did not finish high school and that what began as a way to impress his new bride has evolved to something so much more which included him testing sanitary pads himself with the use of animal blood. I highly recommend watching Arunachalam TED talk from 2012. A documentary called 'Menstrual Man' has been created about him and his work.
What I love about the project I saw is that it is run by women for the women giving them a much needed low cost solution and income. Furthermore the pads are biodegradable reducing our impact on the environment particularly given that waste disposal is another burden particularly in rural areas.
As with all things I believe that a variety of different solutions are needed to address this issue as there is never a one size fits all to any problem.
I’d like to leave you all with an amusing advertisement we have in Australia which shows the marked difference between the countries views on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2-ZzSBl5s
Links on that mentioned above can be found below.
- RubyCup www.ruby-cup.com
- SheCup www.shecup.com
- Goonj NJPC http://njpc.goonj.org/
- Arunachalam's TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution?language=en
- 'Menstrual Man" Documentary http://www.menstrualman.com/
- Arunachalam's company Jayaashree Industries http://newinventions.in/
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