A womans reproductive health is crucial to her well-being, and also to the well-being of her family and community. But too often especially in the developing world mindsets, customs and institutional biases prevent women from getting the reproductive health care they need to thrive.Every day, approximately 830 women around the world die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries. Whats more, maternal mortality is higher for women living in rural areas and among poorer communities. These inequities dont only show up at the time of childbirth: many girls and women do not have access to proper menstrual products, or a private clean space to use or change them. In India, where Im from, 89 percent of women use rags and cloth to absorb menstrual blood, 2 percent use cotton wool, and 2 percent ash while only 7 percent use sanitary pads. The use of unsanitary materials and lack of facilities for maintaining good hygiene raise the possibility of reproductive tract infections.These statistics and the injustices and inequality they reveal keep me awake at night. Most of these problems can be avoided. Beneficial, life-saving interventions exist and are well known. So why are they not reaching the women that need them most? Its because were not listening to them or giving them the information they need to make good decisions about their reproductive health.We must democratize womens health and create an ecosystem of support for women to make healthy choices throughout their lives.I was lucky enough to be born in Chennai, on the southeast coast of India, as it began to modernize. Things were changing, and educational opportunities were available to a middle-class girl like myself. Still, I understood the social and economic hardships women faced in India. I saw my mother toiling day in and day out in the service of others, and I watched as cousins and friends got married early, unable to finish school, let alone go to college. Witnessing at a young age women struggling with poor health and economic hardship, unable to rise out of poverty, I dreamed of solutions to alleviate their silent suffering.Both my mother and father were very enterprising, and I learned from them. As a teenager I was their assistant in several small side businesses that helped keep our family afloat. I also had a few ideas of my own: I saw that you had to be a problem solver to survive and thrive in my world. I set my sights on getting an engineering degree and was lucky to follow it up with a masters in mechanical engineering from a university in Sweden.Years later I was working in product engineering, but was frustrated that high-quality products never seemed to reach those who needed them the most especially women. So my husband and I decided to start a business to bering simplicity, dignity, and access to womens health products. I tell the story of our first product coming to life in my TED Talk.Before we produced anything, we asked women around India a lot of questions. Many mothers we interviewed early on had come across the very crude version of clean birth kits that were sometimes available from charities. A plastic sheet, which provided no absorption, allows blood to smear, which can promote infection. Using a non-sterile thread instead of a clamp on the umbilical cord also risks bacterial infection; the blade used to cut the cord, likewise not sterile, was the kind men used for shaving. The women would ask me, Would you use this to deliver your child? I realized that mothers themselves had never been consulted.Why not? There are many reasons. Charities had little incentive to improve the products: it is expensive to reach and research these women, especially due to language barriers in India. Given my background in engineering and product development, and the years I had spent in rural India scouting possible innovations, it dawned on me that even I had not considered that women mothers needed to be the ones to help design these products.
I started the design process by collecting feedback from women, researched global protocols, and developed different prototypes. With each iteration of our product, we involved women and other stakeholders to ensure that we had a product that best met their needs.And so, our company ayzh was born in 2009 with janma, our $3 clean birth kit in a pink purse designed specifically for women to help prevent infection at the time of childbirth. Nine years later, jamma has touched the lives of more than 700,000 individuals around the world including in Ghana, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Haiti and Honduras. We extended our packing and distribution facilities into Kenya this year.In the years since our launch, weve also developed shishu, a newborn care kit, and maitri, a sterile birth kit tray for hospital use. Most recently, we have introduced kanya, our chlorine-free, ultra-thin sanitary pad. We know that girls and women miss many days of school and work because they do not have access to proper menstrual products pads are often too expensive, and so girls live with embarrassment due to leaking and staining. They further suffer under harmful superstitions and hurtful beliefs about menstruation that persist in many cultures worldwide. We hope that with kanya designed for and with women from developing countries more girls can stay in school and thrive.Whether its birth kits, newborn care kits, sanitary pads or anything else ayzh might create in future, products are really just a tool with which to accomplish our real goal to inform, educate and equip women to take charge of their own health. Health allows everything else to happen. Healthy mothers can work, and mothers with healthy babies can better care for their communities. We must democratize womens health and create an ecosystem of support for women to make healthy choices throughout their lives.As ayzh has grown, so has my vision of what is possible. I am an accidental leader and accidental feminist. I have realized that beyond offering products, the world needs a movement that looks at womens health holistically. Womens health encompasses the entire reproductive health cycle: it starts with the first occurrence of menstruation in girls and goes all the way through menopause. I want to shine a light on the lives of women and girls and give them the tools and awareness they need to improve their own health and that of their children for generations to come.
Take action: As a company, ayzh is committed to gender equality and womens empowerment. We are exploring ways to collaborate and engage women globally to support the delivery of menstrual pads to school girls in India through our recently launched 11 giving model for menstrual pads. Join our campiagn Go with Confidence.The TED Fellows program hand-picks young innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.
