By Alfred Chauwa- Snr News Analyst
In the heart of Kasungu, where maternal deaths have long haunted rural families, one traditional leader has refused to remain silent.
Senior Chief Lukwa has emerged as one of Malawi’s most vocal traditional champions of safe motherhood, using his authority not just to settle land disputes, but to save the lives of women and girls.
For Chief Lukwa, the fight is personal.
“As a chief, I live with the people. I see how women are dying,” he has said.
While many traditional leaders have shied away from sensitive reproductive health issues, Lukwa has tackled them head-on.
At the installation of 12 Group Village Heads at Chidzenje, Chief Lukwa blamed the country’s high maternal mortality on teenage pregnancy, urging parents and his junior chiefs to keep girls in school.
He introduced by-laws in his area that punish parents who marry off girls early and fine families that fail to send girls back to school after giving birth.
At a time when Malawi is debating abortion law reform, Lukwa is one of the few chiefs who publicly supported it.
He argues in conferences and workshops that the 1861 abortion law inherited from the British was killing Malawian women, with statistics showing over 70,000 unsafe abortions annually accounting for 17% of maternal deaths.
“I would like to thank government for its move to look into checking the old law,” he said then.
His advocacy has grown beyond health. In recent years, he has championed women’s land rights, urging women in his area to register their customary land under the new land laws and warning men who block their wives from registering land.
“We are feeling good because we are creating a better environment for everyone,” he told his subjects at a women’s day commemoration at Ching’amba Village.
Health workers in Kasungu credit his leadership for increased hospital deliveries and family planning uptake. Where traditional birth attendants were once preferred, his subjects now know that Chief Lukwa will ask: “Why did she deliver at home?”
In a country where the maternal mortality rate remains at 381 deaths per 100,000 live births, Senior Chief Lukwa offers a model: That the fight for safe motherhood does not start at the hospital, but in the village, with the chief.
