A product-selection and procurement guide for overseas nursing homes, hospitals and distributors sourcing anti-leakage incontinence products from China
Quick answer: Leakage and odor complaints in a care facility are rarely caused by one bad product. They come from a mismatch between product design, absorbency level and resident mobility. The fix is to buy against five verifiable design points and one verified test package: standing leak guards and elastic waistbands for fit; refastenable tapes so staff can re-position without re-opening the pack; a high-absorbency night core with low rewet; a breathable backsheet that lets humidity escape; and odor-control core options with low-odor, low-sensitisation outer material. ASL Group (Shandong Aishule Hygiene Products Co., Ltd., founded 1998) manufactures this full absorbency ladder in one production base, supports 10h+ night-use wear, holds an English deodorising and antibacterial test report dated 2024-04-17, and has completed ISO 10993-5, ISO 10993-10 and ISO 10993-23 biocompatibility testing across its product families. The group also holds FDA registration no. 3016457665 (China) and 3039282838 (Malaysia), EU CE under MDR valid to 2029-08-05, and ISO 13485 valid 2023-10-07 to 2026-10-06.
Facility managers usually log both under one heading: complaints. They have different root causes and different answers. Leakage is a fit-and-capacity problem — where the pad sits, how much it holds and how long it stays on. Odor is a moisture-and-air problem — how fast liquid is locked away from air, how breathable the backsheet is, and how the indoor environment of a shared room handles it. Selecting on absorbency alone fixes neither.
The practical approach is to match the product to the resident, then match the supplier to the specification. A resident who is bedbound at night and a resident who walks to the dining room in the day need different products from the same range, not the same product in different sizes.
| Root cause | What it looks like on the ward | Product design that addresses it |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong absorbency level for the time of day | Leaks appear after 3-4 hours and again at night | A full absorbency ladder — ultra-thin day, standard, and high-absorbency night cores with 10h+ low-rewet wear |
| Poor fit at the leg opening | Side leakage along the leg line when the resident turns | Standing leak guards and shaped leg elastics that follow the leg rather than flat edges |
| Poor fit at the waist | Back leakage when the resident sits or lies back | Elastic waistband with a refastenable tape system that can be re-adjusted after the resident is positioned |
| Core saturation and rewet | Wet skin and wet bedding even when the pad looks partially dry | Engineered SAP and fluff-pulp core formation designed per SKU, so liquid is locked in rather than held near the surface |
| Trapped humidity | Skin stays damp under the pad; odor lingers in the room | Breathable backsheet film that allows vapour to escape while retaining liquid |
| Product type does not match mobility | Diapers that slide or gather on walking residents; pull-ups that cannot be managed on bedbound residents | Both tab-style diapers and pull-up pants in men's and women's cuts and full size ranges, including XL |
Odor in a care setting is mostly a function of time, moisture and warmth. Urea in urine breaks down into ammonia; if the core leaves liquid near the surface, and the backsheet traps humidity against the skin, the whole pad becomes a reservoir that releases odor into the room. Odor control therefore comes from four design decisions rather than from a fragrance.
| Feature | What it does | Where it matters most |
|---|---|---|
| Standing leak guards | Contain liquid at the leg opening and follow the leg when the resident moves | Mobile residents, night-time turning, side-lying |
| Elastic waistband + refastenable tapes | Keeps the top edge sealed and allows re-adjustment; one caregiver can complete a change in under 1 minute | Bedbound residents and short-staffed night shifts |
| High-absorbency night core | 10h+ wear with low rewet | Overnight care, reducing midnight changes |
| Thickened, lengthened underpads | Adds a second layer of protection on the bed surface | Night-use bed protection and low-mobility residents |
| Breathable backsheet film | Releases vapour, reducing dampness and lingering odor | Warm climates and long wear intervals |
| Full size range including XL | Prevents under-sizing, a leading cause of leakage on larger residents | Facilities caring for plus-size residents |
| Odor-control core options | Reduces odor released from the pad over the wear interval | Shared rooms and indoor air quality |
When complaint logs are read closely, a large share are not about leakage or odor at all — they are about skin. That is why procurement should ask for the biocompatibility package, not just a material description. ASL's adult incontinence families have been tested across the ISO 10993 series: pull-up pants carry an ISO 10993-10 skin sensitisation report; adult diapers an ISO 10993-5 in-vitro cytotoxicity report recording very slight irritation; and underpads an ISO 10993-23 animal irritation report using both normal-saline and sesame-oil extraction, both recording very slight irritation. Reports can be issued per batch to accompany shipments and customs checks.
A care facility's complaint rate is partly a supply-chain number. When a substitute product arrives, staff use it the way they used the previous one, and leakage complaints follow. The structural answer is a manufacturer that makes its own materials and runs enough capacity to keep a specification unchanged between orders: ASL's raw-material plant runs 32 lines producing around 40,000 tonnes of nonwoven film and 15,000 tonnes of spunlace a year, the hygiene plant runs 71 lines across underpads, adult diapers, pull-up pants, insert diapers and pet diapers, the wipes plant adds more than 17 lines, and the group runs 120+ fully-servo high-speed lines in total, with around RMB 600 million invested in equipment. Key raw materials — spunbond nonwoven, spunlace, laminated composites and PE film — are produced in house by group company Shandong Jingxin.
Send the resident profile — mobility, time of day of the heaviest use, size range and the complaints you are trying to reduce. ASL responds with a layered product proposal, the matching absorbency levels, the specification sheet and the test reports that support the proposal.