Passionate advocate for women's rights takes helm of Ipas Zambia

Compared to the restrictive abortion laws in most sub-Saharan African nations, Zambia’s abortion law is fairly liberal. Yet unsafe abortion remains a major problem, and the barriers to creating change are enormous.

Millions of Zambians live on less than $1 a day. Doctors are in short supply and the public health system is in crisis. Social stigma around abortion persists, as does gender-based violence toward women and girls. And the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to be felt at all levels of the economy and society.

Enter Felicia Sakala, a midwife and public health nurse with more than 30 years’ experience in women's reproductive health, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS programming. Drawing on her extensive experience with the national Ministry of Health, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Zambia, and the nonprofit organization Africare, Sakala recently became director of Ipas Zambia, which, after five years as part of theIpas Africa Alliance, became an independent country program on July 1, 2011.

“I can think of no better place to pursue my passion for women’s reproductive health and rights,” Sakala says. “Our challenge in Zambia is to translate the promise of favorable laws and policies into practice. No woman should die from an unsafe abortion.”

A native of Zambia, Sakala trained as a state-registered nurse and midwife. She also has a certificate in public health nursing and a bachelor of science in nursing with a major in community health. She worked for 14 years with the national Ministry of Health and at one point was the provincial public nurse-in-charge overseeing 53 urban and rural health centers. But she wanted to devote more time and attention to the needs of women in crisis.

“Zambian society is patriarchal, and worsening economic conditions in the country have impacted mostly heavily on women and girls,” Sakala noted in a public health journal article she wrote in 1996. “Sexual abuse occurs in the home, the school and the street…[C]ultural practices such as polygamy, early marriage, wife inheritance and ritual sexual cleansing of widows make young women especially vulnerable.”

When Sakala left the Ministry of Health in 1989, she went to work for the YWCA of Zambia. As head of its Women’s Human Rights Program, she established drop-in centers for women in Lusaka and six other districts. They provided legal and health counseling and served as meeting spaces and community centers. She also established a transit home for abused women and children that is still active.

In 1999, Sakala left the YWCA to take a position with Africare, a U.S.-based charitable organization focusing on health, water and sanitation, women’s empowerment, agriculture and food security and other critical issues on the African continent. While with Africare, she managed several programs, including the adolescent reproductive health program and the one to assist orphans and other vulnerable populations. She also established a program called “A Safer Zambia,” in response to the problem of gender-based violence. It engaged youth, community members and traditional leaders whose authority and influence could help shift cultural attitudes about women’s rights.

What drew her to Ipas after her work with Africare, Sakala says, was not only the opportunity to continue advocating for women’s health and reproductive rights, but the experience of seeing women and girls in her own community—some of them close relatives and friends—dying from unsafe abortions.

Zambia’s Termination of Pregnancy (TOP) Act, adopted in 1972, permits abortion to save the woman’s life, to preserve her physical or mental health, and in cases of fetal impairment. But as theGuttmacher Institute, a U.S. policy and research group, has reported, “Inaction by policymakers, persistent stigmatization of abortion, lack of awareness of abortion laws and a shortage of healthcare personnel and resources continue to act as barriers to safe services.”

Ipas began its work in Zambia in 2006, and was the only organization in the country devoted to reducing deaths and injuries due to unsafe abortions. In the five years since then, Ipas has worked with providers at more than 40 health-care facilities to provide training and equipment and has conducted trainings with pharmacists to make them more sensitive to the needs of women who come to pharmacies for medical abortion drugs. A Youth Advocacy Action Team established by Ipas in the Copperbelt and Lusaka regions is active in advocating for youth-appropriate reproductive health care, including access to safe abortion. And through street theater and other innovative communication strategies, Ipas continues to get the safe abortion message out to tens of thousands of women, in some cases training them to engage other women on the issue. “It has given us knowledge that was hidden from us before,” said one woman who has benefited from these services.

In the coming year, Sakala says, Ipas Zambia will continue to focus on the broad goal of expanding access to safe and comprehensive abortion services. She is encouraged that the Ministry of Health is a major stakeholder in Ipas’s work and says that, although change does not come easily, there is evidence of positive change.

Three months into her work with Ipas, Sakala heard a knock at her Lusaka office door one morning. Outside was a young woman who was desperate for help. A high school student, she was pregnant and in need of safe abortion services. Sakala directed her to a nearby health center, where she could obtain the medical care she needed from an Ipas-trained provider.

“I felt great relief that the girl had access to a high-quality provider and did not resort to a clandestine abortion,” says Sakala. “She will now be in a position to finish high school and meet her life aspirations. There are many good stories such as this one as a result of Ipas’s work in Zambia.”

Source: http://ipas.org/