Technical secretary, Egyptian Organization for Standards and Quality
Why is the Global ISO standard work for menstrual products important in your opinion?
I represent Egyptian Organization for Standards and Quality, and my title is Technical secretary for the Egyptian committee that develop standards in the fields of menstrual products and hygiene menstrual products. In fact, there is 300 million individuals that are menstruate every day and the individuals need the ISO standards to be safe and effective. So, we participate in ISO/TC 338 to define the safety and formal requirements. In my country we have big numbers of private companies that produce menstrual products and specially for ladies’ napkins. These companies participate in my national committees and have high experience in this field so we would like to participate of the ISO standards by difference experience. Because in the future the ISO standards and Egyptian standards will be harmonized.
ISO standards also have many benefits for consumers, not only to obtain safe and effective products but also these products should also be comfortable. And comfortable products will help them to participate in the society activities such as education. Also, ISO standards will help to achieve the sustainability development goals such as health, sanitary, education, equality gender etc.
Also, the ISO standards existence will decrease technical barriers for trade and there will be no duplication of standards. National and regional standards in Egypt will be harmonized with ISO standards. There will not be any technical barriers for trade. This will increase access to markets between different countries and this will hopefully increase market shares for Egyptians abroad to access different countries.
Are there any problems in Egypt now when there are no ISO standards?
Yes, if there are no ISO-standards different companies will face many problems to access other markets in other countries for exports. But we have national standards within Egypt which is mandatory, and these standards include safety performance and general requirements for menstrual product and especially ladies’ napkins and tampons. EOS, Egypt has issued an Egyptian standard for absorbent hygiene product instead of equal requirements. This standard help manufactures to design and produce ecofriendly products.