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Sakhi Launches Women's Health Initiative

J M Shenoy

With the $ 15,000 grant it recently received from Citigroup, Sakhi for South Asian women has launched a Women's Health Initiative to increase awareness among abused and battered women.

The program also seeks to involve a network of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers to understand the psyche of abused South Asian women, the cultural and social mindset they have, and their recalcitrance to speak about violence inflicted on them.

Many abused women are petrified of revealing their condition to doctors and social workers and hide it, said a Sakhi spokesperson.

Prema Vora, program director for Sakhi, which recently completed a decade of service in New York, says that some women who have suffered miscarriage because of domestic violence suffer in silence and keep back the information from the doctors.

The Women's Health Initiative will gather more information on domestic violence, put together information for women who may not have health insurance. It plans to hold monthly meetings. It will also create a directory of health resources for women.

Bhaswati Bhattacharya, a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital, says there is terrible ignorance in the mainstream medical community about health issues among abused women. Many are not even aware of the help they can get even if they are not insured.

Battered women often neglect their own health. When they approach Sakhi, many are in need of physical and emotional care.

"We want to give them knowledge and resources so that they can help themselves," Bhattacharya says.

Sharmila Rao, a public health graduate student, will help get the medical profession involved in the initiative. "We want them contribute their expertise, their connections and their service to the initiative," she says.

If more South Asian physicians and social workers are involved they can serve battered women in two significant ways: They can help the women and their children directly, and they can get their American colleagues in hospitals understand sensitively the problems faced by south Asian women.

Health issues are immediately connected with domestic violence, Vora feels. Apart from physical abuse, many women have to put up with psychological terror.

Since Sakhi was founded by a group of women at Barnard College in New York, it has reportedly helped over 2,000 women fight abuse, pick up self-esteem and find a place of their own. Run by three full-time employees with the assistance of 50 volunteers that include doctors, attorneys, social workers and film-makers, Sakhi seeks to empower women by teaching them to improve communication skills. By teaching the abused women English, and such skills as accounting, word processing and computer programming, Sakhi helps them get better jobs.

Sakhi volunteers speak nearly a dozen South Asian languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali. It has also produced a video, A Life Without Fear, about breaking the bond of domestic slavery and empowering oneself. It has been screened often before south Asian communities.

For more details, contact Sakhi for South Asian Women, PO Box 20208, Greely Square St, NY 10001; (212) 868-6741, fax (564) 8745.

If you would like to post any information about forthcoming events or community happenings, please email the details to bettypais@aol.com

Information and photographs can also be mailed to Betty Pais at 87-52 108th Street, 2nd Floor, Richmond Hill, NY 11418-2229, USA.

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