Prior to my first ever visit to India, once again, my dedicated team which comprise of 5 international members from New Zealand, Hong Kong and Malaysia proposed a better healthcare community development project entitled ?Sustainable Health 4 All - Working towards a Society Where No Girls are Left Behind? specifically to the under-privileged girls in the rural and sub-urban areas of India.

The source of inspiration ignited unexpectedly when we got to know the incredible and ?funny? story of a man (Mr. Menstrual – Muruganantham, A.) who seeks to change the way sanitary pads are viewed and made in India. The success stories of Mr. Menstrual in creating low-cost sanitary pad to the under-privileged girls in India open up our eyes and spark our inspiration to act so that no girls are left behind.

Sustainable Health for All (SH4A) will act as a social development initiative that works to address the urgent need of Indian rural adolescent girls aged 11 to 19 to have hygienic menstrual devices and practices. My team proposed the feeds-back loop comprised of demand creation, supply enhancement and waste management as an innovative solution to ensure no girls are left behind. The interest charged from lending self-help groups will enable us to cover our operating cost.

Demand creation: Less than 50% of rural Indian girls are aware of sanitary pads. As such, education is important for both awareness raising and creating demand for the product. My team plan to adopt the educational approach from the viewpoint of teen girls, which incorporate entertaining activities into traditional education in schools to make it easier to be understood and accepted by the girls. In the phase of implementation, our team also plans to include male adolescents into the education program as an agent of change.

The idea of creating demand is to encourage the use of sanitary pads among teen girls through creative education. India has a high cultural praise for dancing and singing. Bollywood actresses are more often than not highly idolized by teen girls. My team plans to approach these actresses and give them menstrual talks and campaign. These celebrities will discuss menstruation with school girls by telling their personal stories. My team believes this approach will make the menstruation story more personal and thus seize the attention of the girls and make them want to use sanitary pads just like their idols. It will be an effective new approach apart from the traditional education and lecturing in schools.

Male celebrities will also be needed for this process by informing the teenage males about menstruation. Males often tease females about menstruation due to not understanding clearly what menstruation is because of the cultural taboo associated with the topic. These male celebrities can make the males realise the appropriate way they should deal with female?s menstruation and increase understanding about what menstruation actually is. And eventually, the ultimate education campaign is expected to bridge the difficulties in efforts to break the salience and have a proper talk about menstruation among both genders in the community.

Reported by:

Chuck Chuan Ng (Malaysia), Tran, D. (New Zealand), Lamont, C. (New Zealand), Chan, Y.Y. (Hong Kong) and Chiu C.M. (Hong Kong)

Picture taken from www.swasth.org