Sanfe: IIT-Delhi students invent a device with which Women Can Use Public Toilets Hygienically

In a country like India for women across the country, public toilets are terribly inaccessible. Most of the toilets in cities and on highways are in a dilapidated condition causing unhygienic circumstances for women users.

Its a shoddy kind of affairs as women's have to search for a hygienic toilet to urinate even in case of emergencies. Presence of Germs and uncleanness are what we find in India's public toilets and it poses a health hazard to life killing diseases including sexually transmitted diseases.

Harry Sehrawat and Archit Agarwal— third-year students of textile engineering at IIT-Delhi dared to measure the gravity of this problem and come up with an extremely helpful device Sanfe. Using Sanfe women can pee in public places and dispose of it at any time without inviting any inconvenience.

Explaining their way to this invention, the students said, “71% of public washrooms are not cleaned on a regular basis, and women suffer from immense difficulty as they have to sit every time over the toilet seats while peeing and get infected by the germs and infections over the toilet seats. They don’t have other alternatives either they either have to hold the urine or wipe the toilet seats.”

Sanfe is also an environment-friendly device.

Harry Sehrawat told news website DNA, “We visited many public loos across the city, and almost all of them were unhygienic and unfit for use. Upon further research, we also found out that public toilets were also one of the prominent reasons that cause Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) in women.”

The Engineering duo thereafter started working on Sanfe six months ago. According to them As they entered into their journey, the biggest challenge they experienced was to design an article that fit women of all sizes.

To fix this problem they sought help from our professor in the ergonomics department who assisted them with the designing part. Once they finalized their product they asked their female friends to use them and give them feedback and subsequently making necessary changes based on them.

In social media platform Facebook they wrote, “Sanfe is unique in terms of its design, which is a menstrual friendly design, can [also] be used by women during her menstrual periods. Sanfe is designed keeping in mind the needs of its customers, it is a one-handed grip product, it can be used by a single hand, and the other hand can be used to hold the dress, which is ideal for the Indian women wearing sarees and suits."

The apparatus can be bought at Rs 10 and at present is available at pharmacies in and around AIIMS in Delhi.