Teenage pregnancies is on the rise in Mombasa as more young people are involved in risky sexual behaviour.
According to records from the county health department there were 8,034 cases reported in health facilities in 2018 - an increase of 20 per cent from 2017.This translates to about 660 cases per month that were reported last year.
Dickson Okong’o, the executive director of Stretchers Youth Organisation said the number could be higher. He is training 200 adolescent and young people to be ambassadors and champions against teenage pregnancies.
“There are cases that went unreported. This means probably the number might be much higher," Okong’o told the Star on Wednesday at Panorama Hotel.
According to a 2017 report from the Health ministry on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, in Mombasa, one in five (17 per cent) girls aged between 15-19 had begun childbearing. The number was about the same as the national average at the time.
Okong’o said the worrying trend may affect the economy of Mombasa in the long run if interventions are not put in place.
“After getting pregnant, the girls drop out of school. These might not be useful to our county in 20- 30 years to come due to their low level of education,” said Okong’o.
At the same time, health officials from the county indicated that the HIV prevalence in girls aged between 10-19 years is going up as compared to the prevalence in boys of the same age bracket, which is going down.
“This could point to a behavioural change in boys. It also means that girls are being infected by older men of 20 years and above,” said a county health official at Wednesday’s training.
However, the county has developed an AYP strategy to help tackle the problem.
The strategy involves various stakeholders and programmes aimed at educating the AYP on sexual reproductive health and the dangers of irresponsible sexual activities.
This is being done in partnership with stakeholders like Stretchers Youth Organisation, which targets to reach 20,000 AYPs in Mombasa on sexual reproductive health by the end of the year.
Evans Ouma, the organisation’s programme manager, says most cases of pregnancies have been recorded in February, April and August.
“When you backtrack to when these adolescents became pregnant, you realise it probably is during the school holidays like in November-December, April and August,” said Ouma.
He said interventions are thus needed to be put in place to ensure that these adolescents are busy during the school holidays.
“The lives and future of young people is at stake,” said Ouma.
Ouma and Okong’o said a national conversation on the amount of time students get for holidays should be started so as to look at the pros and cons and determine which is better.
School sporting activities, for example, could be intensified during holidays to keep the students busy.
The two also said a Comprehensive Sexuality Education Curriculum should be developed and taught in schools.
“This can go a long way to complementing specific strategies that are developed by counties. For example, this will help the 2018-23 AYP strategy by Mombasa county which is a great idea,” said Okong’o.
Mombasa was the first county to develop such a strategy to address the issues of teenage pregnancies and now Kilifi and Nairobi are in the process of developing their own AYP strategies.
