Motivated by a group of bio-medical, engineering and business students from Newcastle University, women and teenage girls in rural Dufatanye in Rwanda, are beginning to adopt the use of banana made sanitary pads.
These sanitary products were invented because women and girls in the rural areas were finding it difficult to buy sanitary pads for their menstrual periods. As a result, many women stayed indoors and girls would take compulsory 3-5 days leave away from school. It is in this vain that the four Newcastle students from the Enactus Society, in collaboration with the community leaders of Dufatanye began to explore the use in banana plantations in the village.
See the process of making the pads from its raw form to finished products in this video clip.
According to one of the students, Charlotte Turner, the pads will be cheaper and more accessible. The affordability will prevent the women and girls from using unhealthy materials for their sanitation and enable them to be more integrated into the society- socially and hopefully economically, she said.
This invention apparently is the latest one, but not the first of its kind. Similar innovations have been developed in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
1. Kenyan students tackle menstruation problem in East Africa
In 2014, two Kenyan students from Kabarak University, Ivy Etemesi and Paul Ntikoisa, came up with the idea of a simple, locally made sanitary pad from the soft inner fiber of banana trees. The underlying factors that inspired the four Newcastle students, were no different from those that motivated Etemesi and Ntikoisa. Proudly supported by the Kenyan government, the students research was aimed at improving the physical, social and mental well-being of women and girls all over East Africa.
2. Ugandan industrial scientist made hand-processed sanitary pads
As a response to a United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) survey released the same year that one in every ten girls in rural African schools do not attend classes during their menstrual period, Godfrey Atuheire, a Ugandan industrial scientist also pioneered the making of hand-processed sanitary pads made from banana fiber. His research on the pads was largely sponsored by UNICEF and the end product was similar in scope to the Rwandan innovation aforementioned. Atuheire said the pads would be sold for as low as 1,000 Ugandan shillings in comparison to 2,000 and 3,000 shillings of industry manufactured sanitary pads in the market, which was quite expensive for girls in rural areas to purchase.
3. Elizabeth Scharpf pioneeers banana stem sanitary pads in Africa
Perhaps, the pioneer of banana stem sanitary pad manufacture in Africa was Elizabeth Scharpf, who started the Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE). Scharpf collected a team of villagers, agriculture experts and professors of textile engineering for this venture. Through SHE, many women were empowered to start the social business of manufacturing and distributing affordable menstrual pads. Apart from accessibility, the pads were reasonably cheap- 75 cents or less for a pack of 10.
