The 'Menstruation' Man

First part of the broadcast in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01pz6z9 , reuploaded towards making it accessible via captioning. From the original description:

"Arunachalam Muruganantham is the Indian inventor who has ignored taboos about menstruation to invent a low-cost sanitary pad. He was abandoned by his wife and mother and shunned by neighbours on his journey to improve the health of millions of women. (...)

First broadcast: Wednesday 22 January 2014"

Hello, and welcome to Outlook, from the BBC World Service.

I'm Matthew Bannister.

On today's program, the Indian inventor, his brave breaks taboos by inventing a low cost sanitary pad and improve the health of millions of women

An American woman tells how her own father accidentally ran over her in his car leaving her paralyzed from the neck down

And in rural Bosnia, one man's mission to heal the wounds of war through cows.
"Some people it means that for the first time since the war they can guarantee food on the table,

they have a cow to milk and they can make their own cheese, you could say that I have made survival possible for them."

And also with me in the studio, is Mike Rutherford, guitarist with the rock band, Genesis and leader of Mike +The Mechanics. Welcome to the program, Mike, good to have you here

Thank you. A bit croaky.
Yes, a little bit of a croak here. It' has been a little bit lower than normal.

If you haven't been a rock star, what would you have done do you think.
Probably one or two things, either a journalist, my first idea, but I probably made the right choice there.

Or a sports person, I mean, I like all the sports people and know them very well, may be a polo player. I was a very keen polo player at the time.

You actually play polo?
For 25 years.

And you broke your nose and your chest...
And also my spine that's why I stopped eventually.

Right, but would you have liked to have taken it up professionally?
I think so, there's something nice about the regimen of a sport person. Similar to what I do now.

We will talk some more later on. But it was great to have you on the program, Mike Rutherford from Genesis.

But let's start with this story. The Indian inventor, Arunachalam Muruganantham,

has come up with a low cost sanitary pad which is transforming the lives of millions of women,

but his obsession with helping women to improve their menstrual health came at a cost,

his wife left him for a time, his mother refused to speak to him and his neighbors accused him of being possessed by evil spirits.

Now his simple machine for making sanitary pads has been taken up by groups of women in many Indian states

Not only helping them to avoid dangerous infections, but also giving them a source of income

When I spoke to him through a translator on the line from Coimbatore in South India

He told me what first set him off on his mission.

One day I saw something she is trying to run away from me, hide something from me which make me

[unknown] why why this lady has recently got married is running away me

Then it was the hide and seek, she running and me running up and down. Then she told me it's none of your business get lost from here

Then I found out she was trying to hide a piece of unhygienic cloth from me.

I wish to be very honest with you I won't even use it to clean my (unknown), so that's likely started kindle my interest.

So the rag was the rag she was using to hide her menstrual cycle.

Yeah yeah exactly

So did you begin to do some research to find out more about the menstrual cycle and

the way which Indian women were dealing with it?

I came to know that (unknown) is a menstrual issue. Then I had a chat with my wife.

I told her we live very close to the city, it's not a far off journey, let me go quickly get you some sanitary napkin so that you maintain your health in a hygienic way.

She said: My dear I am aware of it. The television puts on the ads day in day out. But

if you are going to buy sanitary napkins, then I can't buy milk. I can't run the house.

So the question of affordability. So then I realized, yes, this is a serious issue and some soul-searching has to be done.

And when you look into the matter, you discovered that very few women in India actually use sanitary pads.

My survey showed is less than 10% of the people who will use it. So then I took it to the government,

and their survey proved it was less than 12%.

And what sort of methods were women using instead of sanitary pads?

It's a very disgusting, shocking thing. When I started doing my research

I thought it was only rags, bits of torn cloth. So when I started traveling through the country looking to many parts of the country, different states

it was more intriguing, more shocking, more weird. I saw people using leaves, sand, sawdust, ash, and all kinds of,

sorry to say nonsensical things. Then you can see how it will affect the state of women's health

but to the menstrual period because of poly urinary infection this is left to complications.

Was it difficult to persuade women to tell you about their menstrual cycle, to tell you about their methods they were using

because you are a man coming in, and this is not a subject that is often openly discuss in your country.

The first shock came from my wife, she said: "I can't live with you." She send a notice to me and said: "bye! I am leaving you."

The next shock was my mum, then the villagers,

villagers told me I am possessed with evil spirits, is undesirable to have you in the village, that's the local custom is,

they take you to a lime tree, hang you up side down, tie you with chains, the local shoshe tries to heal you

That was the mode of drama happened to me. Luckily there was a time I am leaving the village, so I immediate leave the village

so my wife gone, my mum gone, my village also sighs me, leave all alone in life

That's a terrible price to pay for your research, why did you insist on carrying on?

It was a war within myself, humanities, the welfare of one individual or the welfare of millions of women in the country

my sub-conscious said to me if I can be sacrificed if it is going to help in the long run,

then i recognize there is nothing wrong then I decided to took the plunge

You had lots of problems in your research, one of which was the difficulties to persuading women to help you, so you designed a device

that you could experience a menstrual cycle, tell me how you did that

I sought the result from some women, people are not prepared to give their feedback,come upon it,

So how do I do it, I can create an artificial mechanism, so a football bladder came to rescue

then to the butcher shop, first to get some animal blood, put it into the football bladder

designed to be an uterus,then punctured a couple of holes put tubes into it then wore it within myself in the inner garments

then I tried with my trousers on then walked, cycled and run, trying to slowly pumped the bladder

so when I pumped, I know a certain amount of the animal blood will push out to the tube

then wet the cloth to see the impact how much blood comes out from a single pump, how much time does it takes to spread

all those thing. Me? Football bladder, animal blood, tubes and experiment

People noticed but they didn't thing it was an experiment, people said I was a crazy man

with only his trousers with blood, crazy, crazy fellow

And what's the process of arriving up a cheaper, cost-effective sanitary pad along and difficult one?

After the second world war, the factories selling sanitary napkins was exclusively in the hand of multinationals

to compete with them was a big war, then with difficulty I collected approximately 10-15 used sanitary pads

from women, brought it home, started unwrapping at the back of my yard, then my mum saw it and that was the reason she left me

stating that is not your menstrual, none of your business, you are doing something nonsense

my basic understanding was it's all wood and cotton then I use my common sense

people, the companies, they take cellulose, fibers out of the plant but similar to cotton

for the absorbing effect, so it is cellulose, fibers which works it.

So that was the breakthrough the knowledge that you had to

But how did you come up with the low cost way to doing it, how did you design the machine that would allow women to get together to do this in a cost effective way?

If we need to set up a plant to start my own manufacture for sanitary pads, the initial investments I need about two million dollars

which I can't afford, so my first stage of research ran into four and a half years to design my own plant

the machine was designed in such a way that anyone, educated illiterate they can understand and start using it in just an hour's time

but even after my successful invention, certified by the scientist still people they