Faith leaders key to women’s welfare

When Pope Francis recently endorsed the use of individual conscience in deciding whether to use contraceptives in view of the spread of the Zika virus, it was not just a landmark moment but it underscored the need for faith leaders to get involved more closely in contemporary health challenges.

In northern Nigeria, a former global epicentre of polio transmission, Islamic clerics, who were once opposed to immunisation, turned into advocates for vaccination. As a result, Nigeria, one of the three remaining countries where polio is still considered endemic, has for the first time been polio-free for 18 months.

A profound realisation has lately emerged among health professionals that well-equipped health systems alone cannot solve today’s public health challenges.

Stemming from various highly complex causes, these problems can never be solved by a single approach, but by an array of stakeholders working at a number of long-term solutions.

Today’s health problems trigger a host of family, economic, and social problems that ruin lives and weaken communities. More than ever before, there is a need for a knitting together of multiple partners to choreograph what are often distrusting stakeholders to deliver cohesive responses to the challenges.
Religious leaders can and should be far more directly part of global and local responses to critical problems.

Nowhere is their passion for seeking the common good more needed than in the drive for the empowerment of girls and women, the group that is invariably most affected by lack of access to health services and whose wholesome health is so central to the survival of entire families.

In Kenya, as in many African societies, women’s access to health is largely determined by culture and tradition, which in turn are closely tied to religious beliefs.

Unfortunately, these traditions often tend to be driven by entrenched patriarchy, assigning women an ancillary place and little say in their destiny.

Passion and compassion for those who suffer are key pillars of most faiths, and this is why leaders of religion are well-placed to accelerate the quest for gender equality and empowerment. Giving girls and women the wherewithal to play their full part in a country’s development is not just a moral imperative, it is the only sustainable approach.

The first step is educating them and giving them the freedom to determine when to marry and how many children to have. A juxtaposition of culture and misplaced religious biases has for eons given men absolute control over women’s bodies.

EARLY MARRIAGES

Female genital mutilation and early marriage are just two examples. The consequences do not just affect women, but entire nations. For instance, in much of sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are too high for families to save or invest for the future.

In Kenya, the average woman in Kenya bears 3.9 children, and in regions such as northeastern Kenya, fertility rate is 7.5. The high birth rates are invariably in areas where religious teachings take a key role in every day decisions. There is, therefore, the opportunity to underline faith values such as matching family size with economic resources.

Another important area is cervical cancer, which currently claims the lives of 266,000 women every year, with the vast majority in developing countries.

Pre-adolescent girls can be protected for a lifetime from the main causes of this terrible disease through the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, which is available in some of the world’s poorest countries, often through vaccination activities in schools.

However, given that school attendance can sometimes be low for girls in many poor communities we need to find ways to reach these girls. Religious leaders can help by raising awareness about the benefits of the HPV vaccine as well as the importance of educating girls.

All these messages will result in girls staying longer in school, abandonment of female genital mutilation and early marriage, fewer women being struck down by cancer, and the uptake of healthy choices such as child spacing.

These are the messages that will enable all of Africa to harness the demographic dividend as decreases in fertility combine with socio-economic policies that enable investments for the youth and ensure less dependent populations.

Religious organisations have not only been moral pillars in the community, they have also led in providing access to education and health for the marginalised. Now is the time for them to lead the drive towards demolishing harmful, man-made traditions and cultures.

Dr Berkley, @Gaviseth, is the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Mr Chatterjee, @sidchat1, is the UNFPA representative to Kenya.