An activist has spent two years trying to get an Aids nappy initiative off the ground
Charlene Smith
Yvonne Spain has a dream of women across Southern Africa sitting at sewing machines making adult nappies for people with Aids.
The final stages of Aids is a cruel, hopeless time for those ill with the virus. Their bodily functions succumb and become difficult, if not impossible to control and often the ill people are so sick they cannot clean themselves.
Often women have massive menstrual flows, too heavy for any sanitary pad or tampon to contain; and men, women and children infected with the disease get diarrhoea so acute that they often lay in their own watery waste, unable to clean themselves.
In the two years Spain has pursued her quest she has been stymied by people who believe vision should be coupled to moneymaking and so nothing happens.
Spain’s vision is that communities should make and sell the nappies basic wrap-around underpants with a gusset into which newspaper can be inserted to absorb the heavy menstrual flow or faecal matter of Aids patients.
The soiled newspaper would then be removed and the underwear changed and washed.
At present there is nothing to assist people in the final stages of Aids who lose control of their bowels and are often left to lie on newspapers in huts awash with excrement.
“I spoke to a pulp mill who were excited by this vision, but they saw it as a manufacturing opportunity. I see it as a way of people in communities doing this for themselves, so it creates jobs while creating dignity for those with Aids,” Spain says.
Spain says the pulp official she discussed the idea of special nappies with spoke of research and development costs and asked why she didn’t use virgin wadding (cotton wool insert). Spain insists that people in communities don’t have money.
“We already teach them to use plastic supermarket bags instead of surgical gloves. We need to find solutions that people can afford, using materials easily available in their communities.
“You go into the most humble of homes where there is a sense of desperation, and a lack of dignity as families battle to cope. The sight of people lying in their own excrement troubled me and I became convinced we had to find a simple and affordable means for them to cope.”
Spain says the nappies need to be a “simple, one-size-fits-all design.”
A longtime Aids activist, Spain is also coordinator of Pietermaritzburg’s Cindi (Children in Distress), a network of more than 40 organisations including Child Welfare, Thandanani and others working among children infected and affected by HIV/Aids.
She has had little response from established organisations about her special nappy initiative. She wrote to the Inventors’ Guild more than a year ago and to various chambers of business organisations but has had no response.
The Pietermaritzburg Mental Health Society (PMHS), which has sewing workshops in Mbali, has been investigating the feasibility of the project among their own mentally handicapped seamstresses.
Elna Welman of PMHS says she believes these nappies could create an essential work opportunity for people in communities, and at the same time enable them to help those infected with HIV, “we are still testing designs, however, trying to find the easiest, cheapest and most effective design.
“I have a dream of us setting up huge production lines using the unemployed and channeling money into communities. Instead we are seeing growing numbers of people dying without dignity and families battling to cope as one after another family member becomes ill. We really have an opportunity to develop a cutting-edge solution that could be used across Africa, Asia and other areas of infection.”