Religious Leaders Engaged in Family Planning

Religion has for a long time been the highest influential entity in the world. It is with this knowledge that religious groups are called upon to take centre stage in family and state matters in almost all countries in the world.

On the 29th of August 2018, Churches Health Association of Zambia (CHAZ) conducted a Religious Leaders Family Planning Training in Lusaka. This training was aimed at orienting Religious Leaders who CHAZ has not engaged with in advocacy for Scaling Up Family Planning.

In July 2017, the government of Zambia made its Family Planning 2020 commitment at the London Summit on Family Planning and committed in the following thematic areas; Policy, Finance, Program and Service Delivery to meet their family planning goals. Siting that if we advocate for scaling up Family Planning, women will opt to access Family Planning services. As of 2017, 1,404,000 women were using a modern method of contraception. As a result of that contraceptive use, it was projected that 370,000 unintended pregnancies will be prevented, 110,000 unsafe abortions will be averted and 600 maternal deaths will be averted.

However, in 2016, 16,000 pupils dropped out of school due to teenage pregnancies and 70% of them were in grade 7 and below. Because of these saddening statistics, CHAZ believes that the churches have to be engaged so that they could disseminate information to adolescents and parents on abstinence and other sexual reproductive matters related to adolescents.

CHAZ also encourages the church to take a more active role in educating its members on family planning methods. The church might be seen as less powerful but in reality, they have more power and play a bigger role in advocacy in the nation.

During the training, CHAZ made a call for Churches to reaffirm their commitments to talk about family planning through the church structures and engage congregants to discuss family planning in all settings. And also to commit to talk about Family Planning with a focus on adolescents in their various settings as this will help reduce the number of teens having early pregnancies.

During the training, Major Angela Hachitapika of the Salvation Army Church, gave a presentation of what the Salvation Army has been doing to promote family planning and good health in their churches. She started with calling for high level and serious commitment among church leaders to educating their church members on health matters. She said that the Salvation Army Church has taken another step by training all its Pastors in family planning.

The Salvation Army Church believes that family planning is more than just child spacing, but a way of promoting life for women and children. As it helps reduce maternal mortality rate, especially when practiced by young women.

Sheik A. Mwale of the Islamic Council of Zambia, also spoke on the importance of the religious leaders to work together in promoting the health of the congregants. He encouraged the leaders to always tell their members the truth. He ended with an appeal to all religious leaders to work together for the good of their members.

Many people don’t have information on Family Planning, hence it is important for the church to have individuals that are trained and knowledgeable in sectors like health to help their members have adequate information on health matters.

Speaking at the training, CHAZ Head of Department for Advocacy and Planning, Mr. Siame said that it is imperative that Religious Leaders work with CHAZ in promoting Family Planning. He encouraged the religious leaders to be advocates for Family Planning in Zambia as this will ensure a continued increase in the knowledge base among Zambian citizens on Family planning.

The training ended with CHAZ reaffirming its commitment to the promotion of Family Planning by lobbying for more funding so as to increase the Family Planning Budget and enhance Task shifting, ensure Commodity availability to CBD’s and develop a Community Commodity Tracking Mechanism, and most of all, continue having dialogue with Religious Leaders.