This is write up about a humanity who created — and wore — a fake , shed blood uterus made out of a bladder and goat ’s blood . This is also a story about an discoverer breaking profound tabu to revolutionize the life of womanhood . Either way , how a school dropout in India come to manufacture a cheaper way to make sanitary pads is a narrative at once weird and inspiring , as chronicle in arecent BBC clause .
Let ’s start with the phony womb .
Back in 1998 , the fresh married Arunachalam Muruganantham bought sanitary pads for the very first time and was astonished to discover how expensive they were . Like most miserable Amerind adult female , his wife had been using dirty and unsanitary rags , rather . Cotton itself was n’t expensive , reasoned Muruganantham , so why were store - bought sanitary launching pad ? He set up to work monkey .
The problem was he could n’t test his innovation . His married woman was but one person , his sisters refused , and even the medical students he convinced to try were not taking his study seriously . That ’s when he agnize he could only essay on himself , as the BBC report .
“ I became the man who wear down a sanitary pad , ” he enjoin .
He created a “ uterus ” from a football bladder by punching a couple of holes in it , and make full it with goat ’s blood . A former classmate , a butcher , would resound his bike gong outside the house whenever he was going to drink down a goat . Muruganantham would call for the line and coalesce in an additive he get from another friend at a blood coin bank to prevent it clotting too quickly — but it did n’t stop the smell .
He walked , cycled and campaign with the football game bladder under his traditional apparel , invariably pump rakehell out to test his healthful launch pad ’s absorption rates . Everyone thought he ’d go away frantic .
But Muruganantham soldiered on . A breakthrough came when he at last figured out exactly what memory - corrupt sanitary pads are made out of . When he could n’t get outright answers from the companies , he posed as a textile mill owner looking to get into the business and asked for sample . What he get was blockage of the plant fiber cellulose .
Muruganantham speaking at INK Talks
That ’s where his veridical conception come in : a cheap , simple-minded car that turns blocks of cellulose into useable sanitary pad . “ The process involves four simple step , ” according to the BBC . “ First , a simple machine standardized to a kitchen Cuban sandwich check down the tough cellulose into fluffy material , which is packed into orthogonal cakes with another machine . The cakes are then envelop in non - woven fabric and disinfected in an ultraviolet discourse unit . The whole unconscious process can be get word in an 60 minutes . ”
He took his design to some of Indian ’s poorest states , where women are taught to make and even sell sanitary pads themselves . For Muruganantham , his invention is more about authorize woman than take a leak money . His work is discontinue the taboos around openly discussing menstruation in India and it ’s giving rural women job . He await to exposit to some 106 countries worldwide , including Kenya , the Philippines , and Bangladesh . Not bad for a plan that start with a fake uterus . [ BBC ]
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