A strip of salvation for poor women

Times of India: 27 Apr 2008

Low cost sanitary napkins promote better hygiene and women’s empowerment

It’s nearly dusk. Time for Lalita’s children and husband to return home. She quickly removes the damp cloth hanging behind the door of her hut and hides it in a corner. Chances are the cloth will get dirty there and not dry by morning. But she had not option – she has not other cloth to use during her menstruation.

Hers is not a lone case. Millions of underprivileged women are forced to use rags, strips of sack, leaves, newspaper and even sand or ash during those four-five days every month, leaving them open to infections. It’s a serious heath issue that’s frequently missed out in healthcare programmes.

Anshu Gupta, director, Goonj, a Delhi-based NGO which channels used clothes and other materials from urban to rural areas, says, “Most don’t have enough clothes to cover themselves; where will they find cloth for those five days?” Even the ones they use would be dirty rags as menstruation is culturally considered dirty or impure.

Plus, there is the issue of privacy. Poor women often have to walk to distant spots near a river or a lake to wash the cloth. As a result, they run an increased risk of becoming victims of sexual violence. Plus, sun-drying the cloth is problematic as many wouldn’t want men to see their ‘shame’. As a consequence, most end up using damp cloth, raising the risk of infection. Also, girls are forced to miss school as they don’t have adequate protection alternatives. The sanitary napkins available in markets are mostly beyond their means.

However, succour is in sight. Some organisations have been looking at low-cost alternatives. “ What they need is something that’s highly reusable,” says Gupta.

His organisation is trying the simple concept of reuse and recycling. Old cloth is collected as donation, washed and sanitised to make 1ft x 1ft sanitary napkins. They are then packed and distributed through a network of grassroots group, self-help groups (SHGs) and panchayats. The napkins cost Rs 3 each, but “ we don’t insist on payment. The intention is not to make a profits, but to habituate them in using napkins,” says Gupta. The project has won a World Bank award, and last month, Goonj also bagged the NGO of the Year Award, jointly instituted by UK-based The Resource Alliance and Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation for its transparency and accountability.

Another approach has been to train women’s SHGs to make the napkins and sell them at normal prices. The two-year old ‘Sugam’ project by Arumbugal Trust (AT) in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district trains 12 such SHGs to make the napkins and using surgical cotton and aqua pearl gel, a super-absorbing polymer, wrapped in non-woven fabric. They’re sold for Rs 2 each.

Recalls Latha Mathivanan, director of the trust, “When we were working on the reproductive heath project in the district, we can across a woman who was bitten by a scorpion hiding in a rag that she used as a napkin. That prompted us to start this project.”

AT was aided by a Japanese doctor who arranged for the import of the polymer, and by World Bank. The SHGs have a revolving fund, and keep the profits made from selling the napkins. They will be applying for bank loans too. “ If the production increases, the price can come down. Our main aim is to make women use the napkins.” Mathivanan says. But brining about behavioural change here has been a tough process, despite holding classes on hygiene. Adding to it is the low priority a women accords to her own health.

However, in Angara block in Ranchi district, some women have amazingly moved on and started purchasing branded napkins. Says Rini Sinha, assistant director of the health programme at Society of Rural Industrialisation (SRI), Ranchi, “With improving purchasing power, women have better decision-making capacity.”

In a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology, SRI trains SHGs in making napkins of cotton cloth, absorbent paper, and cotton – all biodegradable materials to make disposal easier. They are sold under the brand name ‘Mukti’, and priced at Rs 15 for a pack of 10. “We are trying to bring down the price to Re 1 each,” adds Sinha. The project started after a medical camp was held at Angara at the instance of Dr Abdul Kalam when he was principal scientific advisor. Says Sinha, “We had to do more of husband counselling because they were the ones paying for the napkins.”

These innovations offer not just better health, but also greater decision making and purchasing power to those at the bottom of the pyramid.