Academic Nurse The - Columbia University School of Nursing

18 • Academic Nurse
Nursing Faculty and
Students Extend a
Helping Hand
Around the Globe
in march 2009, mary moran, an instructor in the Combined bs/ms Program,
took a break from teaching to visit ethiopia with her husband. during her
visit, moran, a former overseas aid worker, couldn’t pass up the chance to ask
regional health director and friend, gebre Ab barnabas, what was his most
pressing healthcare need.
The response from her ethiopian colleague puzzled moran.
“he told me that he had trouble keeping girls in school and i asked him what
the problem was,” moran said, with her distinct hint of an irish brogue as she
sat in her office at the school. “he told me that girls often miss three to six
days of school each month because they don’t have enough supplies to cope
with their menses and therefore cannot leave their homes to go to school. i
told him we have to do something
about that.”
And with that exchange, moran
set to thinking of a way to solve
mr. Ab barnabas’s problem. more precisely,
she started thinking of a way
to help ethiopian schoolgirls manage
their monthly cycles.
For school age girls in the developed
world, the menstrual cycle rarely
invokes real dread. but for millions of
their counterparts in underdeveloped
countries, this monthly occurrence
may result in up to a week’s absence
from school.
moran returned to campus with a
challenge, one she thought her students
could help her solve. “i told the
students that we had a project: to find
an efficient, comfortable and easy
to maintain sanitary napkin for these
girls.” First, moran wanted to answer
Ethiopian
children pose for
the camera