UNS — The Covid-19 pandemic has been occurring for two years and changed Indonesian people’s life. One of the changes is on the requirement to wear a mask during an activity with other people, making people who aren’t used to such a lifestyle adopt it since March 2020. Mask became a daily necessity and even became a rare item early in the pandemic. The phenomenon and the low production output in Indonesia have created free production of face masks with no proper quality control. Departing from these issues, a team of Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta faculty members took the initiative to produce an aromatherapy mask.
The idea was promoted by the team of Diploma Program (D-3) in Pharmacy led by Heru Sasongko, S.Farm.,M.Sc., Apt., and members: Prof. Drs. Sutarno, M.Sc., Ph.D.; Yeni Farida,S.Farm., M.Sc., Apt.; M. Fiqri Zulpadly Mh, S.Farm., M. Biomed., Apt.; and Dian Eka Ermawati, M.Sc., Apt. Their innovative product was a non-medical face mask with aromatherapy funded under a community service scheme with Non-APBN funding UNS 2021. Aromatherapy is expected to attract the community members to obey the regulation, improve comfort, and use the face mask.
The team collaborated with several partners during the development process, including Jamsaren Apothecary Surakarta as a pilot project site, MSME of mask production in Surakarta, and Rumah Atsiri Indonesia, Karanganyar as a natural oil producer. The mask has also been tested for the endurance of aromatherapy in the mask and respondents’ feedback on the comfort of the mask.
“Most of the respondents said that it is comfortable and like the aromatherapy mask,” Heru stated.
Currently, the team is conducting development and improvement on the mask while waiting for the result of IPR registration result. The team hoped that they could register the mask as a medical mask in the future and market the mask to the wider community. Humas UNS