Sanitary Towel Shortage in Cuba

Cuban women complain that sanitary towels are frequently unavailable due to inefficiencies in the state system for distributing goods around the country.

Like foodstuffs and other basic items, sanitary towels –known as “intimas” in Cuba – are on a list of things that people can buy via a rationing system which sets subsidised prices, distribution times, and amounts per person.

In the case of “intimas”, the state-run pharmacy chain handles deliveries and distribution, but in practice, supplies are erratic, with gaps of months at a time.

In the Batabanó municipality in Mayabeque, the province immediately west of the capital Havana, distribution normally happens every three months – but often the consignment is only enough for one month’s consumer demand. Customers also complain that packs of “intimas” are often incomplete and that product quality can be so low as to be virtually unusable.

Local women have filed a number of formal complaints with the citizens’ advice bureau attached to Mayabeque’s provincial council. Raíza Paredes, who manages a pharmacy in San Antonio de las Vegas, has filed more than 50 such complaints over an eight-year period.

Staff at the bureau have a stock response that reflects the way officials view state supply systems. The province does not have its own factory manufacturing sanitary towels, and cannot be held responsible for production elsewhere. But within Mayabeque province, the state distribution network is highly efficient, they say.

This kind of answer baffles locals like María Enríquez, a resident of the Sopapo neighbourhood.

“Independently of whether there’s a factory producing them in the province, it’s hard to believe that the government is making a real effort to solve the problem,” she said. “I cannot believe that with all their resources, they cannot guarantee distribution of ‘intimas’.

“Meanwhile, most of the shops run by [self-employed] ‘cuentapropistas’ manage to access large quantities, albeit at higher prices. Which factory do the private enterprises get them from?”

“Cuentapropista”-run shops sell at higher prices than the rationed state network, so they are only for those who can afford them. So are the state-run luxury stores which stock imported tampons, but only accept the higher-value convertible peso.

Enríquez says that when sanitary towels are unavailable, she and other women she knows use and resuse boiled cloth.

Some of those hardest hit by the shortages live in slums to which they have moved from other areas, according to a civil servant in Batabanó municipality’s Office of Consumer Affairs.

Because they are illegal migrants, these people are denied residence permits and ration books, so women cannot obtain “intimas” at subsidised rates.

The situation is the same in other provinces.

Carmen Cejas, who lives in the San Luis municipality of Pinar del Río, Cuba’s westernmost province, says that outside the provincial capital, all municipalities run short of “intimas”, while in rural areas, deliveries can take up to six months.

“In the more remote areas, ‘intimas’ only arrive in communities two or three times a year ,” she said. “Because of the distances involved and transport issues, getting to the shops where they’re on sale is also a big problem.”

Cejas said that in the countryside of Pinar del Río, most women use pieces of cheesecloth – a material used to cover tobacco plants – rather than manufactured sanitary towels.