Deep in Tunisia's desert south, camels stride toward humming milking machines. Their milk is at the heart of a women-led project promising an economic lifeline for disadvantaged communities.

Spearheading this effort is 32-year-old Latifa Frifita, who launched Tunisia's first, and so far only, camel milk pasteurisation unit two years ago in Medenine.

The unit is based on research by Amel Sboui, 45, a senior biochemist at the Institute of Arid Regions, who succeeded in patenting a pasteurisation method that preserves camel milk's "nutritional and therapeutic qualities" while extending its shelf life to two weeks.

Containing up to five times more iron than cow's milk, camel milk is non-allergenic and some studies have suggested that it has immune-boosting and anti-inflammatory properties.

Pasteurisation of camel milk is essential to bringing it to wider markets because the milk is highly perishable.

Sboui and her lab of ten researchers -- eight of them women -- also conducted clinical trials at the regional hospital which showed that consuming the milk could help diabetic patients reduce their medication doses by up to half in some cases.

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